Just build a wall.


After reading the previews of Viceroy Jorge's speech on immigration, Polistra thinks it's time to build a wall ... provided the Viceroy ends up on the same side of the wall as his beloved Emperor Vicente.

Come on, Viceroy. Surprise us. Just once????

-----

After hearing the speech: No surprise. Sends National Guard to look pretty in uniform. Emphasis on real ID card is good, but won't happen. Both the religious folks and the leftists are fanatically opposed to serious ID cards.

He missed the least costly and most effective solution: Stop illegals from using schools, hospitals and welfare services. Require those institutions to check ID and refuse service except for hospitals in genuine emergency. This would instantly eliminate the biggest cost of the illegals, and would shape the nonproductive ones into going home quickly.
  ¶ 3:41 PM

  Bravo Condy!
The folks at National Review are deeply disturbed by our restoration of diplomatic recognition to Libya.

I'm not. In fact, I'm beginning to think that Rice may have turned the State Dept into an effective and practical warfighting tool. (Which must have taken some very hard work, considering its natural pro-Arab bias.)

Rice is following the LBJ model: let Qaddafi be as much of an SOB as he wants within his own borders, as long as he does what we need him to do on the international front.

If it turns out that Qaddafi has fooled us, and that he's still supporting terrorism, then I'll eat crow. At the moment I don't see any evidence along that line. But I don't give a flying fuck what he does to his own people. And our government shouldn't either.

The President is not supposed to be a moral exemplar. That's the Pope's job.

When dealing with savage warrior cultures like Arabs, the plain and simple fact is that we are NOT going to turn them into nice meek Unitarians. We CAN turn them into savages who choose not to bother the civilized world. That's all we can ever do, and that seems to be the thinking of the State Department. If so -- provided I'm not missing some hidden agenda -- BRAVO!
  ¶ 12:11 PM

  Definitions again


Professor Polistra has been looking up definitions again.

The Washington Post is all lathered up about a "Massive Intrusion on Personal Privacy".

Which of these two definitions, do you suppose, has the Post's little panties all in a swivet?

And which of these two definitions would a SANE, NON-TREASONOUS American be more worried about?

I declare, it's a mystery wrapped in an enigma.
  ¶ 5:39 PM

  Can't say it any better than this.....
Hamilton, in Federalist 23.

The authorities essential to the common defense are these: to raise armies; to build and equip fleets; to prescribe rules for the government of both; to direct their operations; to provide for their support. These powers ought to exist without limitation, BECAUSE IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO FORESEE OR DEFINE THE EXTENT AND VARIETY OF NATIONAL EXIGENCIES, OR THE CORRESPONDENT EXTENT AND VARIETY OF THE MEANS WHICH MAY BE NECESSARY TO SATISFY THEM. The circumstances that endanger the safety of nations are infinite, and for this reason no constitutional shackles can wisely be imposed on the power to which the care of it is committed. This power ought to be coextensive with all the possible combinations of such circumstances; and ought to be under the direction of the same councils which are appointed to preside over the common defense.

This is one of those truths which, to a correct and unprejudiced mind, carries its own evidence along with it; and may be obscured, but cannot be made plainer by argument or reasoning. It rests upon axioms as simple as they are universal; the MEANS ought to be proportioned to the END; the persons, from whose agency the attainment of any END is expected, ought to possess the MEANS by which it is to be attained.

-----

And our current exigency isn't even new or unforeseen. The framers were already dealing with infiltration by various enemies (French, British, native savages), and with Mohammedans hijacking ships.

Would Hamilton have authorized police to listen when enemies were conspiring, so as to give us better information to "direct the army's operation"? Obviously yes. Hamilton couldn't foresee electronic communication, but other forms of distant signaling like semaphores and nautical flags were common then. Do you suppose Hamilton would have prohibited our sailors from using a telescope to watch the enemy's semaphores? Prohibited our soldiers from trying to read the native savage's smoke signals? Would Hamilton have allowed an enemy-adhering federal judge to interfere with such listening or observation? Obviously not. Only a hopelessly incompetent and weak-minded executive like Jimmy Carter or Kindler Gentler George would even ALLOW such interference.
  ¶ 9:08 AM

  Ou sont les Neiges d'Antoine?

A competent wartime president would take Ahmadinejad's letter as a grand opportunity to score propaganda points. Needless to say, all we get from Kindler Gentler George is "Not gonna answer it."

If Tony Snow gets a chance to be himself ... or if he actually gets a chance to serve, which now seems dubious ... he could begin to fix some of these problems. He's proved repeatedly that he understands what's needed.

And what's needed, as usual, is hardly new. We figured it out 60 years ago, but Bush ignores all past experience. Here's a three-minute snippet of a large and dramatic effort to answer Hitler's propaganda. At that time Hitler was trying to split America and Britain, so BBC and CBS worked together to produce a series of programs that would help Yanks and Brits understand each other as they fought together. The series was written by Norman Corwin, who is still alive and kicking, and the score was not by Spike Jones but by Benjamin Britten. Other major composers like Copland wrote some of their best stuff for similar radio programs and movies.

Note especially the explicit instructions for handling enemy propaganda, and the detailed description of the difference between our approach to news and the Axis approach.

And what do we have today? Bush tells us nothing about what he's doing. It's all between him and God, and we poor outsiders don't need to bother our pretty little heads about the whole business. BBC has been solidly pro-Mohammed since the late '80s. CBS needs no introduction. No music is being composed today at all, so I can't even make a snide comparison in that department. Well, I could, but I don't want to soil my blog with an explicit mention of that ... creature ... ah, never mind. If I even think any further about that ... individual ..., I'll end up issuing a fatwa.  ¶ 10:49 AM

  Our own Waziristan
The latest 'revelation' of a 'surprising' fact: NSA has been running traffic analysis to spot calls to enemy agents. As before, this is no surprise to anyone who pays attention to such matters. If you think for even a few seconds about the purpose of NSA, you can see that they would have to do something like this. I've assumed it for twenty years.

Unlike the previous NSA 'revelation', this one could do some actual harm.

Here's why: The article says that Qwest has refused to go along with this traffic analysis, because Qwest is afraid of legal consequences. This gives specific and useful info to the enemy.

Without any special knowledge, the Army of Allah could easily assume, as I did, that traffic analysis is a constant part of our intelligence operations. But they couldn't automatically assume that Qwest phones were immune from surveillance. Now they know it.

One more step: How would Qwest be subject to legal consequences? Through a lawsuit brought by an enemy collaborator in Federal court, which would be within the 9th Circuit. [Later news report indicates that such a lawsuit was already begun several months ago.] So the enemy now knows for sure that the 9th Circuit is effectively beyond federal control. Our little Waziristan, in other words. Courts in the 9th District will be inclined to serve the enemy, while other areas are more inclined to serve the United States.

This accidentally ties in with a point I was making yesterday. Our victory in WW2 was assisted by mobilization of American companies. In that war, fought with huge quantities of tanks, aircraft and bombs, American automobile and steel makers played the major part. In WW4, fought largely in the realms of intelligence, American phone companies are the critical industries.

So this 'revelation' verifies something I've been worried about for a long time. Kindler Gentler George is unwilling to use the carrot of defense contracts and the stick of prosecution to mobilize the appropriate sectors of American industry.

-----

Addendum: Kudos to ABC News and George Stephanopoulos for stating clearly and flatly, without the usual pretense of some-say-this / some-say-that debatability, that traffic analysis is absolutely legal!

  ¶ 3:39 PM

  Operation Skywatch


Previous administrations had a rather different attitude toward citizen participation in defense. I've talked before about the Ground Observer Corps during WW2.

Later, just after Korea, Ike put together something called Operation Skywatch. Here's a one-minute PSA from Fibber's show in 1953:

- - Listen - -

If we'd had 400K flying citizens on the alert in the fall of 2001, would things have turned out differently? Would it have acted as a deterrent? No way to tell. But I can guarantee that the Bush approach of PUNISHING citizens who dare to help with defense is, shall we say, counterproductive. No, we shall say idiotic and suicidal.
  ¶ 11:27 AM

  Awful thought


Today's missive from Ahmadinejad is decidedly interesting. Spencer at Jihad Watch thinks it may be a prelude to an attack, though he's not sure. The letter contains a wide variety of appeals. Some of it is straight from Democrat talking points, but not a lot, especially compared to previous tapes from Zawahiri and Zarqawi.

Ahmadinejad spends considerable time and effort appealing to a Christian sensibility, and to a populist strain common to most European and American cultures.

Now here's the awful thought. When I read this bit - - - - -

The people of many countries are angry about the attacks on their cultural foundations and the disintegration of families.

They are equally dismayed with the fading of care and compassion.

The people of the world have no faith in international organisations, because their rights are not advocated by these organisations.

Liberalism and Western style democracy have not been able to help realize the ideals of humanity.

Today these two concepts have failed.

Those with insight can already hear the sounds of the shattering and fall of the ideology and thoughts of the liberal democratic systems

- - - - I found myself involuntarily nodding in assent.

If the Green Mist Man is able to click something positive in my mind, it's a bad symptom. And that's putting it mildly. Trouble is, our own government has failed so miserably to keep up our own morale, failed so miserably to give us facts and logic to cling to, failed so miserably to give us any reason for hanging with our own side ... , that a clever Persian can make a fiercely loyal American pause and say "Hmmmmmm."

FDR didn't allow that Hmmmm to happen, even involuntarily. He knew that Fascism was magnetic, especially in tough times. He took constant pains to counter its appeal with words and actions. In the end he managed to implement one piece of the fascist program -- corporatism -- more effectively than Germany, without adopting the racial aspects of fascism. Part of our victory in WW2 resulted from the complete devotion of big business to national purposes; Germany didn't mobilize its industries nearly as well, which contributed to its defeat.

The difference between then and now: populism ---> authoritarianism had a strong local representative in the form of Father Charles Coughlin. Because Coughlin was explicitly trying to run for President, he posed an internal political threat in a way that Hitler or Mussolini could never do.

In our current situation, the Dems and Reps agree solidly on world citizenship, no borders, free trade (another name for outsourced slavery), careful sensitive warmaking, and paying tribute to the enemy. There is no Big Name speaking on behalf of the basic defense of THIS particular nation. There is no competing institution that could force the two parties to focus on basics. Rush is, I guess you'd say, demographically analogous to Father Coughlin, but he emphatically doesn't want to be a political leader, and he's more elitist than populist.

Such a vacuum will inevitably be filled one way or another. In hard times people need and deserve a leader. The worst possible answer is Ahmadinejad's answer, voluntary dhimmitude and surrender. Next worst would be a hard leftist.

The least-bad answer would be a complete change of personnel at the top without abandoning our system. A bit like castling in chess, you might say....
  ¶ 10:16 PM

  Conflation
Gak!

Rush is making a critical mistake in answering a hostile question about NSA eavesdropping. The caller challenged Rush to specify how the mere knowledge that NSA is spying on al Qaeda is harmful. Rush bobbled the question entirely, and seems to be missing a basic distinction.

I discussed this matter -- rather definitively -- back in December when it first came up. Still, the distinction needs to be emphasized. The legality of a leak is completely independent of whether it does harm or not. As with many other crimes, prosecution depends on context. When one football player smashes into another football player, that's part of the rules inherent in that context. If the same player made the same tackle on a stranger in the street, he'd be properly arrested for assault. Same here. There's nothing automatic or inherent about secrecy. The executive branch makes the decision to treat certain things as secret, and can decide to un-secret-ify the same things at any time for its own purposes. We assume that those purposes include protecting the nation from its enemies, even when the executive is as obviously incompetent as the present one. When somebody outside the executive branch, such as the NY Times, decides to declassify information, that's illegal, just as tackling in the street is illegal.

As I said before (and as Rush's caller said just now), this particular illegal declassification is harmless and possibly even helpful, because al Qaeda is a sophisticated spy-like group, well trained by Saddam's intelligence service. They already know how to play the countermeasures game, but I'm confident that NSA has enough resources to play the same game a little bit better.

Harmless doesn't mean legal, though. The street tackle is still assault even if the victim doesn't need a doctor. The Times fully intends to aid our enemies, as they have shown over and over in every possible context. So they should be prosecuted for sedition if not treason.
  ¶ 10:43 AM

  Vices (MORBID ALERT!)


With all the talk on the soap opera cable news channels about lung cancer and drinking and prescription drug abuse, I got to thinking about my own ancestors and acquaintances who have died over the years. Which vice is worst?

This morbid line of thought may also be influenced by John Batchelor's apocalyptic take on Persia.

Anyhow, I can think of about 20 known relatives and quasi-relatives who died at various ages, ranging from 40 to 99.

Looking first at the youngest end: One cousin died at 40 from mixing alcohol with prescription drugs (and probably illegal ones). An uncle died at 50 from mixing alcohol with prescription drugs. A grandfather (mother's father) died at 62; he smoked heavily and drank heavily.

Starting now from the oldest: The other grandma (mother's mother) lived clean and died at 99. A great-grandpa (father's mother's father, and the man I'm named after) died at 97. [I believe he smoked a pipe, but that could be a false memory. I met him exactly once, when I was about 4 and he was about 94. I vividly remember sitting in his lap, looking up at an extremely wrinkled face that was beaming with pride. Must have been my first look at a very old person, and my first look at an adult face that wasn't just annoyed or preoccupied.] A great-grandma (father's father's mother) dipped snuff and complained constantly about her awful health, until she died at 96. A great-aunt (99's sister) smoked heavily until age 50, when a massive heart attack compelled her to stop. After that, she cruised to 93 with no further health problems.

In the middle range, those who died from 70 to 90, about half smoked and half didn't; none were heavy drinkers. I don't see a clear correlation between smoking and age of death in this set.

I suppose formal statistics might bring out more detail, but the salient point in this tiny sample is obvious.

Variation in natural durability is always the primary determinant. Beyond that, tobacco will keep you from reaching 99, but drinking, especially mixed with other chemicals, is what cuts you down early.
  ¶ 1:16 PM

  So that's where.....

Professor Polistra has been hitting the books, to see if she can determine what Kindler Gentler Georgie is trying to do, since it's obvious he's not working toward victory in any normal sense. She found the following illuminating comparison:

Victory (n)

Def 1: (Old Churchillian origin):

Now one bond unites us all -- to wage war until victory is won, and never to surrender ourselves to servitude and shame, whatever the cost and the agony may be.


Def 2: (Mod. Bushian dialect):

Use power to help people. For we are given power not to advance our own purposes nor to make a great show in the world, nor a name. There is but one just use of power and it is to serve people.

Apparently the 'Modern Bushian dialect' is an allophonic variant of Old Wilsonic, which became extinct in 1938. It shows traces of semantic borrowing from the Gandhian idiolect as well.
  ¶ 11:55 AM

  Worth reading!
A long article by an Australian Catholic bishop on the nature of Mohammedanism, and its true relation to peace, politics, and culture.

The most immediately relevant section:

These two examples show that there is a whole range of factors, some of them susceptible to influence or a change in direction, affecting the prospects for a successful Islamic engagement with democracy. Peace with respect for human rights are the most desirable end point, but the development of democracy will not necessarily achieve this or sustain it. This is an important question for the West as well as for the Muslim world. Adherence to what George Weigel has called “a thin, indeed anorexic, idea of procedural democracy” can be fatal here. It is not enough to assume that giving people the vote will automatically favour moderation, in the short term at least. Moderation and democracy have been regular partners in Western history, but have not entered permanent and exclusive matrimony and there is little reason for this to be better in the Muslim world, as the election results in Iran last June and the elections in Palestine in January reminded us. There are many ways in which President Bush’s ambition to export democracy to the Middle East is a risky business. In its influence on both religion and politics, the culture is crucial.

There are some who resist this conclusion vehemently. In 2002, the Nobel Prize Economist Amartya Sen took issue with the importance of culture in understanding the radical Islamic challenge ..... "The central issue, in sum, is freedom".

This does work for some, perhaps many, people in the rich, developed and highly urbanised Western world, particularly those without strong attachments to religion. Doubtless it has ideological appeal to many more among the elites. But as a basis for engagement with people of profound religious conviction, most of whom are not fanatics or fundamentalists, it is radically deficient. Sen’s words demonstrate that the high secularism of our elites is handicapped in comprehending the challenge that Islam poses.

I suspect one example of the secular incomprehension of religion is the blithe encouragement of large scale Islamic migration into Western nations, particularly in Europe. Of course they were invited to meet the need for labour and in some cases to assuage guilt for a colonial past.

-----

I've never said this before, and probably won't again, because it's trite and overused. Just this one time, though:

READ THE WHOLE THING!
  ¶ 10:10 AM

  More on Moussaoui
1. Abraham Scott should run for some public office. He's not a very good public speaker, but he is a beautifully clear thinker.

-----

2. Another constant theme we hear from the Collaborators is that we should lead by example. We must carefully observe the Rule of Law and Due Process and Elections Certified By Jimmy Carter so that our enemies will see all this and say "Oh, those Americans are so Nice and Wonderful! I believe that I will repent of my Evil Ways and become Nice and Wonderful also!!!!"

This is a wildly bizarre, inaccurate and insane observation of human nature. No social mammal behaves like this. Not cats, not dogs, not monkeys, not human children, not human adults, especially not human communities or nations. When any individual or nation observes that Americans are nice, the natural response is not "I will be like them" but "I will take advantage of them." Even more so when we're dealing with the Arab nation that is already engaged in destroying us.

-----

3. The Supermax Prison is being described as a hard and torturous place. Sounds pretty nice by comparison with my long-ago prison experience; I would have vastly preferred total solitary to weekly rapes and beatings.

Will he get his message out? You bet. American prisons have chaplains for all faiths including the Mohammedan "faith", and we can be 100% certain that the Imam or whatever will carry his messages to the outside without interference.

-----

4. As usual the blogosphere is chuckling at the French offer to take Zac off our hands. As usual Polistra is not laughing. France differs from America in two relevant ways: France does not have an ACLU, and France does have a competent and tough intelligence service, which might be able to gather and use information from Zac.

-----

5. When Zac-babe says "Look at yourselves. I fight for my belief." --- we should listen. We should start fighting seriously to insure our belief survives. As I've said before, you can't start worrying about the heart and mind of the enemy until you own his sphincter. Fighting means throwing bombs and bullets, not examples.

-----




6. AAAARRRRGGGGHHH!! I thought we had reached the limits of idiocy, but obviously not. One of the 9/11 family members interviewed on Fox just said "We need to get out and educate. We need to teach tolerance." No response even needed.
  ¶ 7:57 AM

  Allah wins one!
Moussaoui will be flying back to London soon, pardoned by Kindler Gentler Georgie, to fulfill his dream of completing Jihad against Christians and Jews. Bank on it.

I must admit, though, that the specific prosecution argument for the death penalty was totally nonfunctional. Even if he had somehow opened up and spilled the beans to FBI (under what motivation?) there's no chance that FBI would have done anything with the information.

Even in ordinary capital cases I'm fiercely tired of hearing the line: "Well, I think he should have to spend many years thinking about his crime. That will be worse punishment than death." This may apply to a few criminals who ended up killing as a result of a long chain of bad decisions, but those folks (quite properly) are rarely even considered for death. The hard-line murderers are proud of what they did, and 'thinking time' is really 'gloating time'.

The same argument applies here, though with a different twist. Zach-baby is an invading soldier who didn't get to complete his mission. He has managed to engineer us into keeping him alive so that he can plan and finish his mission. And rest assured he will do exactly that. When he says "America, you lost, I win" he is not crazy at all. He's simply stating an outcome that he knew in advance because he understood our weakness better than we did.

A trivial pet peeve: Why do the newscasters insist on pronouncing his first name to rhyme with 'precarious'? That's neither the French nor the Arabic nor the English way of pronouncing Zacharias. In short, it's not any way at all! But it's obviously the official line; I've even heard one infobabe correcting another when she pronounced it the normal English way.
  ¶ 1:40 PM

  Peters gets it
Via NRO, today's column by Ralph Peters.

Just as yesteryear's aristos did, today's nobility of wealth and culture see themselves as above nationality. Patriotism is fodder for the peasants (unless it can be exploited for profit). They have far more in common with business partners across the globe than with the guy who fixes their plumbing. They intermarry across borders and forge alliances based on their own interests - as the Tudors, Valois and Medici did before them.

This new aristocracy is less attached to a passport than to a lifestyle. As for those who can't afford the price of admission, let 'em eat cake.

There is, indeed, a globalizing class. But the emergence of that super-class doesn't portend the globalization of humanity. For the masses, the flight from flags isn't toward a new borderless meta-identity, but back into old, enduring associations: tribe, faith, family - and bigotry.

...

Even in our own society - the best-positioned in the world to profit from globalization - there's a worrisome divide between the multinational executive who retires with a $400 million farewell smooch (and who naturally supports globalizing trade), and the worker maxing out a credit card to pay for a tank of gas - to whom globalization means a threatened job, even if it also means cheaper underwear.

However: Peters shows (perhaps unconsciously) that he is part of the aristocracy, when he refers to tribalism as bigotry and sees it as bad.

Sticking to your own is not automatically bad. What's bad is unequal access to tax-provided services like police protection. What's bad is Leninist exploitation of divisions, and worst of all the Leninist habit of creating divisions that aren't natural.

Peters also misses the deadliest consequence of the borderless economy. Because our 'aristos' have allowed most of our manufacturing to go overseas, we no longer own our defenses. We have to buy electronics from Japan, machinery from Korea, and uniforms from China; we have to let Arabs run our ports and inspect our cargo.
  ¶ 7:07 AM

  Free trade zone


Mexico decriminalizes drugs.... Polistra thinks we'll finally get the best end of NAFTA.

We get 10 million grass cutters, they get 10 million grass smokers.

We get new Christians, they get new Wiccans.

Maybe there is a God after all.


-----

Addendum after listening to the talking heads on TV, and even some conservatives in other blogs: Why in the world are they upset that Mexico is finally shooting itself in the foot? (With a needle, that is...) Oh! Peters (see above) explains it. Those folks, including our DEA, are trans-national leftists. They are Citizens of the World.

What a batch of LETHAL rubbish.

Civilization works when groups form naturally and defend their OWN interests, without sticking their goddamn nose into everybody else's business. France shows us the proper way to do this, which is why Polistra likes France so much.

When one group (the Army of Allah, just as a little f'rinstance) pokes airliners into our buildings, our job is to DESTROY them and all their primitive savage friends. This will discourage the few surviving Arabs from poking their goddamn nose into our business again, which will allow the natural divisions of civilization to get along again for a little while.

------

Update: Ah, poop. Emperor Fox decided to veto the decriminalizing. I guess he must have realized our hippies would not be advantageous to the motherland. Can't have that. In a proper Mercantilist arrangement, la Colonia del Norte must be restricted to its basic job of supplying cash inputs to the motherland, and can't be given any reciprocal advantage. Emperor Fox understands how to defend his own country's interests, even if our elites don't.
  ¶ 10:46 PM

  WWBD?


If we had Bach on our side in this modern Crusade, what would he say? Of course he rang several grand changes on Ein Feste Burg, which is an excellent Crusading song. But I suspect JSB would have found a more specific weak point in this enemy's fortifications, giving us a more specific battle hymn.

-----

Here's a bit from his Wedding Cantata, BWV 210,
cast as a sort of dialog between Envy and Music.

-----

Envy:

Schweigt, ihr Flöten, schweigt, ihr Töne,
Denn ihr klingt dem Neid nicht schöne,
Eilt durch die geschwärzte Luft,
Bis man euch zu Grabe ruft!

Musik:

Was Luft? was Grab?
Soll die Musik verderben,
Die uns so grossen Nutzen gab?
Soll so ein Himmelskind ersterben,
Und zwar für eine Höllenbrut?
O nein!
Das kann nicht sein.
Drum auf, erfrische deinen Mut!
Die Liebe kann vergnügte Saiten
Gar wohl vor ihrem Throne leiden.
Indessen lass dich nur den blassen Neid verlachen,
Was wird sich dein Gesang aus Satans Kindern machen?
Genug, dass dich der Himmel schützt,
Wenn sich ein Feind auf dich erhitzt.

This would serve equally well as a dialog between Allah and Jehovah.

-----

Unfortunately we don't have Bach on our side; we have ..... Charlie Daniels.

-----

Technical note: The fact that I am still breathing, not struck down by lightning, after putting Bach and Daniels in the same sentence -- twice now -- is sufficient proof that God is either nonexistent or powerless.
  ¶ 8:43 PM

  Random
As part of some required report on Patriot Act, FBI reveals that it has been gathering info on thousands of Americans. This is presented, even by Fox News, as some sort of shocking! shocking! shocking! BigBrotherism.

No, no, no. Gathering info is exactly what we want and need the Bureau of Investigation to do. Failing to gather and analyze data is why 9/11 was allowed to happen.

What makes Big Brother bad is not what he knows, but how he uses the information.

In fact, several current stories illustrate what happens when prosecutors act without learning enough information first. Consider the Rush "doctor shopping" case, or the Duke "rape" case. Both prosecutors mindlessly forged ahead in blind fealty to the leftist cause, obsessed with pleasing Catharine McKinnon and Jesse Jackson. They didn't pause to check any of the basic facts. Both end up looking silly, but it doesn't really matter because neither will have to pay a price for their tyranny and idiocy. The so-called, and let me italicize, boldface, and underline so-called, quote """legal""" """profession""" unquote exists solely to serve Catharine McKinnon and Jesse Jackson, so this particular brand of tyranny will naturally lead to judgeships for these two idiots.
  ¶ 10:26 AM

  Question for Issa
Congresscritter Issa appeared on Fox just now, and offered the following 'logic' in defense of a comprehensive nonexistent immigration policy:

"We need to give amnesty to the illegals who are already here, because it's not their fault that the broken system allowed them to enter."

Oh goodie! So, if I can manage to get a gun through a malfunctioning metal detector at an airport, this means I can go ahead and board the plane with the gun, because the broken system let me through! Wow!

What's that you say? I won't be able to do that? Why? Oh, because I'm only a lowly American citizen? Amnesty is only for aristocrats like Mexicans and Arabs? Aw, phooey. I knew there was a catch somewhere.
  ¶ 2:29 PM

  Tribute to a little house.


I've used this digital model of a house in a couple of cartoons. In fact it's an accurate model of my own real-life hovel, all 520 glorious square feet of it.

Next month I'll make the last mortgage payment (Huzzah!), so this feels like a good time to pay tribute to a humble servant that has done its job beautifully.

Zooming out a bit:

Most Western towns grew in a series of discrete bursts. If you know architectural styles, you can read a town's history like counting the rings in a tree. The original townsite, down by the river or railroad, fills up quickly then sits around waiting for the next boom. If there is no next boom, the town usually fades out.

In most surviving towns you'll see a 1920's zone representing the Coolidge expansion, and a 1950's zone where the returning soldiers used their GI Bill mortgages. Aside from that you'll find a record of local events like a steel mill, an army base, or an oil-drilling boom, each in its own subdivision, with similar houses within each area.

Spokane didn't work that way. It blasted out hugely and richly at the very start (silver and gold mining, railroads), then slowly and steadily filled in afterward. A 1920 street map looks very much like the current one, so you can't find major zones or rings of growth. Thus every area holds a random mix of 1910 Sullivanesque mansions, 1920 bungalows, 1930 colonials, 1940 emergency quickies, 1950 mass-produced GI modules, 1960 Wrightish ramblers, 1970 bi-levels with awful beaverboard siding, 1980 pseudo-Palladian monstrosities, and 1990 Seven-Gables monstrosities.

This little house lives in a subdivision called Boulevard Park, platted in 1918 around an electric interurban line that never materialized. The interurban was meant to run northwest toward Loon Lake, so Boulevard Park is a five-block-wide diagonal strip. Boulevard Park didn't thrive at first; only a dozen 1920 houses are still visible. It must have been mighty rural for a long time. The next scattering of houses are a few late '30s colonials, then the 1950 GI modules pretty much saturated the land.

Based on a little research and a lot of guessing: This little house was built in 1943, when building a new house was technically illegal.



The basic square (20 by 20) is identical to a plan found in some 'kit house' books, and is built plainly and solidly. I don't see any definite signs of kit-itude (no Aladdin or Sears indications), but there are a dozen similar houses around this quarter of town, so it's a fair hypothesis.

It was placed on the back of a corner lot already occupied by a '30s colonial; the owner of that house was listed as a contractor in the City Directory, so I'm assuming he built this place on his own lot to make some rental money from war workers, and later separated the piece of the lot.

The neighborhood must still have been semi-rural at that time, because the house had a septic tank and an oil heater.

The first occupants were Jim and Bertha Willis**. Jim died in '55, then Bertha either died or moved in '61.

The back section (laundry and storage room) was crudely tacked on in 1956. The Directories show only sporadic occupancy until 1968, at which point this house simply disappears from the books and never returns. Was it condemned at that point? Possibly, because it does show signs of a long vacancy.

In 1978 a local realtor bought it. Using Carter's 'weatherization' subsidies, he replaced the wiring and plumbing and added electric heating, aluminum siding and metal storm windows, then rented it out. In 1991 he retired from landlording and put it up for sale.

I moved to Spokane in late '90 to take a programming job at the local branch of WSU. Tired of apartments, I hoped to finally buy a house. Unfortunately my timing was poor. A whole pack of Californians had discovered Spokane at that same moment. They cashed out their wildly overvalued million-dollar GI modules in LA, and bought better houses here for 80K. So my hopes of buying a decent-sized house for a decent price evaporated, and I had to rent an apartment and lower my sights.

The delay was probably a good thing, because it gave me time to learn which parts of town are safe. Friends advised me: "Pick a bad house in a good neighborhood, not vice versa. You can fix a house but you can't fix a neighborhood." Amazingly I followed that advice, and not-so-amazingly it was good advice. The other houses available in this price bracket were nicer or larger than this one, but they were in gang-infested neighborhoods.

So in the end I didn't get what I dreamed of, but I got exactly what I needed. Low expenses, convenient location (walking distance to groceries and WalMart) and relative security.

At this point I've lived in this little house for [approximately] a quarter of its life and a quarter of my life. It will never be featured on HGTV, and it was probably not intended to last very long, but its basic design and construction have held up through six decades of bad weather and bad maintenance. So far it has only given me two expensive problems (septic tank, replaced by a real sewer connection in 2004; water heater failed two weeks ago), and in both cases it waited until I could afford the money and time to fix them.

Does my love for a minimal house make me a CrunchyCon? Maybe so. I frankly don't understand how Livin' Large became congruent with conservatism; Coolidge wouldn't understand it either.


= = = = =

** 2014 update: Accidentally found Jim and Bertha in the 1940 Census while searching for something else. Traced them a bit further with obituaries. Jim was born in Missouri a few miles from where my grandpa was born. More Census searching (Mo ED 46-11) finds a pile of Willises and a pile of my relatives living in the same township. They were neighbors.

Jim and Bertha moved to Spokane in 1909, and in 1940 they lived a few blocks south of here in a bigger and better house. That house is still intact, and I see it every day on my walks. Jim was 53 and Bertha was 51 in '40, which would make him 68 when he died in 1955. Bertha then moved in with relatives in the Valley and died in 1970. Jim was a mechanic with above-average income, so it's not obvious why they 'downsized' to this house in '43.
  ¶ 9:34 PM

  Yakety yak
Kindler Gentler Georgie is using words to answer the gas-price problem.

Does he actually understand that he occupies the office of President? We humble citizens and bloggers can do nothing but bitch and moan and suggest solutions. The President -- uniquely -- can take concrete steps to solve this problem, because it's not just a matter of prices but an obvious part of the current war.

Executive orders were meant to be a wartime tool. Clinton overused them in peacetime, but that doesn't mean a wartime president should avoid them. Now is the proper time for executive action.

For one thing, he can open up all offshore drilling by executive order, even if that hurts the feelings of Bro Jeb and Bro Arnold. For another, he can remove all legal barriers to building new refineries with the 'stroke of a pen', and then give oil companies an urgent choice: Build them, or we'll nationalize you. He can do the same with nuclear power. Remove regulatory barriers, enact Loser Pays in all federal courts, and then dare the power companies to get going. (This approach to nukes will work easily because power companies are already well underway with plans for many new nuclear plants. With oil, the forcible alternative might be needed.)

I know that KGG will not do any of this, because he is basically a World Federalist liberal, a citizen of the United Nations. KGG obviously cares more about Mexico, Dubai, and China than about dull old America.
  ¶ 8:02 PM

  Authenticity
I don't understand why CIA and the media put such emphasis on the question of authenticity when a new Osama or Zawahiri tape comes along. The question would make good sense for a tape that came into CIA anonymously, 'over the transom'. It's totally irrelevant for a tape broadcast by al-Jazeera. Their own sources believe it's authentic, and their audience will believe what it says. If it agrees with Osama, the effect will be identical regardless of who owns the larynx that produced the sound. If it disagrees with Osama in any meaningful way, we can be sure that Osama himself will counter it quickly. So we don't need to check its authenticity at all. For 100% of practical purposes, it's authentic.
  ¶ 12:26 PM

  Vive la France!


Where has Polistra been lately? France .... at least in spirit.

Our opinion leaders are deriding France for its latest 'surrender', as seen in this story.

Hold on a minute. It's true that France has surrendered to Germany once, but these recent developments are the opposite of surrender. Getting rid of bad laws is not surrender in my book. Getting rid of bad laws is common sense.

No American politician has the guts to veto a smoking ban.

No American politician has the guts to veto a Superfund law, even though we've seen how it gives thieves lawyers total power to steal anything they want.

No American politician dares to give young workers a sense of security, though some claim they would like to. [Granted, it's hard to compare with American circumstances in this case, mainly because French youth acquire something called an 'education' before starting in the workforce, unlike American youth who need to spend the first few years at work learning to read and write. So French youngsters are more likely to pick the right career area, if not necessarily the right job at the start.]

Finally, Chirac has flung down the gauntlet at Allah decisively: Any attack or planned attack will be met with all possible force, including nuclear.

Our opinion leaders also like to deride France's policy of short work weeks. Nonsense. If the 35-hour week was bad for business, France would be dismally failing and we would be triumphantly succeeding. It's the other way around, dammit.

France has about 1/6 of our population, yet it has three major NON-BANKRUPT auto companies (Renault, Citroen, Peugeot) and several smaller specialty firms. France has Airbus, which competes on the same level as Boeing. France runs a large trade surplus with us directly, and France's overall trade balance has been strongly positive for many years. It turned negative for the first time in 2004, at roughly $800 per person. America's global trade balance has been strongly negative for many years, getting worse fast; in 2004 it was $2800 per person.

Yes, I know economists tell us that trade deficits mean nothing. Sorry, I don't buy that line any more. Our specific trade deficit means that China owns us.

What do we have to show for our 70-hour weeks and two-earner families? Oversized and refinanced houses that nobody has time to enjoy.

Casinos and mortgages. That's where the American economy is going: Bets and debts.
  ¶ 9:11 AM

  Earth is round, part II
A reagent-quality example of the New Inquisition at work. A school supervisor in Palm Beach has been fired for calling homosexuals a "protected species".

In other words, for saying that the earth is round.

The ironic strange perfectly predictable thing about the firing is that Lynch was actually taking the side of the homosexuals:

During the meeting, Lynch brought up the board's discrimination policy, amended in 2003 to protect individuals on the basis of sexual orientation. According to the meeting transcript, Lynch complained that the school district's enforcement of the policy was insufficient.

"So we now added this protected species and we haven't done it to the level we need to," he said.

And another ironic strange perfectly predictable thing is that the firing perfectly proves Lynch's own point. This species has so many layers of legal protection that you can't even state the fact that this species is protected.
  ¶ 11:09 AM

  Economic common sense
A rare bit of clarity on monetary policy, by Tom Bethell in the Spectator. What makes it rare is that Bethell is thinking about the welfare of savers and ordinary folks in general, so his logic is understandable to savers like me.

The business news on TV is exclusively aimed at the bettors in the Wall Street Casino, who hate savings with a purple passion because savers take money off the Casino's roulette tables.

Here.
  ¶ 7:01 AM

  Professional deformation
From Steve Sailer's column this morning:

To reach a high position in American life, it doesn't pay to waste time associating with a wide range of your fellow human beings. You are much better off spending as much time as possible schmoozing other ambitious people who can help you out. It pays to adopt whatever conventions they exhibit in terms of what you are supposed to talk and write about. And, for highly verbal people like journalists, it's safest if you train yourself never to even think about anything you aren't supposed to express.

Somewhat similarly, I once noticed when talking to a famous scientist who had decided to write academic articles about race that this person essentially never noticed anything about reality that didn't appear in a refereed academic journal (i.e., something that could be cited in one's own papers). This is an extremely efficient attitude for generating papers of one's own, but it seemed a tad limiting.


This observation isn't fresh, of course; any honest look at careerism and tenure reaches the same conclusion. It's especially bad in academe, where a graduate student quickly understands that he has two choices: enslave every synapse of his brain to his advisor's thinking, or waste 15 years of his life.

Sailer's observation suddenly illuminates a trend I've been half-consciously noticing. Blogs haven't been doing their job lately; they haven't caught any big liars or cheats since Dan Rather.

We caught Dan because we came from a wide variety of backgrounds and mindsets, and brought our varied expertise to bear on one target.

Now the blogworld is dividing into the 'killer apps' and the private journals read only by spybots. The big dogs, the killer apps, are mostly written by folks who started as professional journalists. They are mavericks to be sure, but they still had the same 'professional deformation' as a Katie Couric or a Shep Smith.

-----

Addendum: This trend is completely understandable in hindsight, though I don't think it was predicted beforehand. The essential qualities of a newspaper have evolved over 300 years in response to reader desires. Those essentials remain constant whether the text is set by Linotype and printed on a Heidelberg Rotary, or set by Wordpad and printed on your CRT. A mix of hard news, human interest, humor, and philosophy, united by a recognizable and sympathetic voice. Ink newspapers lost that combination over the years as they became pure carriers for Leninist orthodoxy. Because readers still longed for the original set of qualities, something was bound to fill the niche. So it's hardly surprising that the folks who do it best are those who have learned the tricks and disciplines of the craft.
  ¶ 11:57 AM

  Pop quiz


Two simultaneous events:

1. A black whore stupidly tries to protect her pimp from an assault charge by falsely accusing some rich boys.

2. A nation that has been warring us (in various degrees) since 1978 declares that it is now beginning the final assault.

Which event do you take with deadly seriousness?

If you picked (1), congratulations! You are an American! For a few more weeks anyway.

Why such despair? Simple. Persians are considerably smarter than Arabs. We can make 'thousands of tactical errors' in fighting Arabs and still have a chance of winning. Not so with Persians.
  ¶ 10:49 AM

  Persia When the enemy ANNOUNCES that he is training 40,000 suicide bombers, the word 'pre-emptive' no longer applies. (Though I don't understand why any rational human would object to pre-emptive war anyway.)

If we had a rational government, now would be Fat Boy time. B-52 time. Time for 40,000 megatons. Time to de-populate Persia.

If we actually have any bombs, that is. If Anorexic Rumsfeld hasn't already sold all of our nuclear arsenal to China as part of his senile preparation for the 1991 peace dividend.

I no longer believe that we can do anything. Persia wins. Checkmate. A uniquely appropriate word here....

-----

Addendum: the 'dialog' on this subject is even more bizarre than on Iraq. With Iraq, we heard lukewarm defenders of Bush's lukewarm Kindler Gentler War, versus advocates of total surrender. No defenders of serious fighting. On Iran, the Sunday Morning Experts offer a spirited debate between Chamberlain and Chamberlain. One side wants to bombard Iran with Robust Diplomatic Language, and the other side wants to let the UN slam Iran with Robust Diplomatic Language.

Who knows, maybe France will come to our rescue by actually nuking Tehran. In this insane asylum, Chirac seems to have the firmest voice against Allah.
  ¶ 10:07 AM

  Intuition?????
Two stories make me wonder if 'conventional wisdom' has really gone utterly loony.

1. A story about the role of household cleanliness in preventing allergies and asthma. New and 'shocking' research shows that early exposure to a certain amount of germs and dirt is good for the immune system, and leads to less asthma later on. The announcer says "Intuition tells us that cleaner is better." Whoa. Not my intuition, not my grandparents' or parents' intuition. Fifty years ago, conventional wisdom totally comprehended the idea of immunity, which was already a couple of centuries old. When we talked about a kid who had asthma, we assumed that his mother was a Lysol freak, and we were usually right.

If the tone of this story truly represents modern 'common sense', then we've truly lost our minds. I wonder if the Precautionary Principle has penetrated our brains to the extent that we no longer believe in immunity?

Here is the ABC version of the story. [I must have been listening to the CBS version on TV, but couldn't find it on the web for reference.]

2. Various panelists discussing Moussaoui agree easily that he's crazy, because he wants Allah to curse us, and because he had dreams about 9/11 and Afghanistan that turned out to be true. He also dreamed that Bush will pardon him and send him to London. So what's crazy about any of that? Most of what he says is perfectly consistent and appropriate for an enemy soldier, specifically in the Army of Allah. Some people have more accurate dreams than others, and if his dreams were accurate on the first two points, he's probably a good choice for a soldier in that particular army. As for the third dream, I'll bet he's right there as well, even though I haven't had a dream to that effect. In Misterbush's Neighborhood, everyone is forgivable, and Arabs are just good people who we need to understand better.
  ¶ 7:51 PM

  WWFS?
What would Fallaci say about Comedy Central's dhimmitude?

Well, let's open The Rage and the Pride at random....

The problem is that the solution does not depend upon the death of
Osama bin Laden. Because the bin Ladens are too many by now.
...
Moreover, they are no longer the bold Moors who conquered Spain and Portugal riding camels and fighting with golden scimitars. Times change. Today they are the shrewd tricksters whom we teach how to pilot a 757 jet, how to use a sophisticated computer, how to fabricate a nuclear weapon. How to destroy or block an electrical system ... how to unleash an epidemic virus. How to blackmail a government, how to manipulate a Pope, how to seduce and exploit the media and the so-called intellectual world. ... They have excellent bonds with our churches, our banks, our televisions, our radios, our newspapers, our publishers, our academic organizations, our unions, our political parties.

Worse: they live in the heart of a society that hosts them without questioning their differences, without checking their bad intentions, without penalizing their fanaticism. ... Which is the reason why these Reverse Crusaders become more and more, demand more and more, boss around more and more. Also, the reason why (if we continue to stay inert) they will vex and boss us more and more. Till the point of subduing us. Therefore, dealing with them is impossible. Attempting a dialogue, unthinkable. Showing indulgence, suicidal. And he or she who believes the contrary is a fool.

QED.

-----

Sidenote 1: I find it mildly interesting that this question is being discussed properly and fully in the blogworld, with a proper perspective (i.e., it's just a TV show, but it's evidence of our submission.) Yet I don't hear anything about it on TV. Possibly I'm missing something, but normally when I click around the dial, the various 'TV shows about TV shows' like Inside Edition and Entertainment Tonight will be discussing the latest political gimmick by some left-wing drama or comedy. And they'll be discussing it often enough and long enough that I'm bound to catch it at some point. I don't hear a word about South Park's Mohammed episode; not even an attempt to dismiss it as just another political shtick. Only silence. Orwell would call it unthink. Even discussing whether the topic is discussable is undiscussable.

-----

Sidenote 2:

Even on the pro-American side of this question, we seem to be missing the basic danger. Much of the chatter runs like this: "If we censor ourselves we're failing to use our rights, and we're becoming like them."

No. Wrong. Dead wrong. Self-restraint is usually a good thing, and in wartime even government censorship can be a good thing. It's one of the temporary sacrifices we make in order to have our LIVES and our PROPERTY relatively intact so we can resume our normal way of life after the war. We understood this clearly in previous major wars.

The problem here and now is deeper and simpler. Separate out the whole topic of censorship, and what we have here is a major corporation OBEYING THE ENEMY'S ORDERS. It's just incidental that self-censorship is the primary way for a TV network to obey the enemy. Other corporations could submit in their own ways: Tyson Foods could offer only halal meat; Donna Karan could design only burqas; USBank could stop paying and charging interest. Allah has enough rules for everybody. The fact remains that our media are OBEYING ALLAH in the way that matters most for their particular product. They are sacrificing to HELP the enemy, not sacrificing to assist OUR morale. That's the problem. Censorship is not the problem.


  ¶ 9:24 AM

  With apologies to Jack Benny


So we have this choice. Should we allow an influx of Mohammedans or Mexicans?

Well, let's examine the pros and cons. With Mexicans we get bad but cheerful art, bad but cheerful music, big families with high morals and a decent work ethic. With Mohammedans we get no music, no art, rape, mutilation, and suicide bombings.

Hmm. Bad music or total destruction. Bad music or total destruction. Let me think..........
  ¶ 11:59 AM

  Yes, democracies war.
I'm just damned tired of this Wilson / Bush nonsense. Bush keeps repeating the mantra "Democracies don't war". No amount of repetition will true this phrase. (If Bush can verb his nouns, so can I.)

Germany and Japan both had parliamentary systems before WW2. Hitler was the product of free and fair elections, as was Tojo. Both grabbed more power than the parliament intended, but they were originally elected the Wilson / Bush way.

What turned Germany and Japan into peaceful nations after WW2 was not the first coming of democracy. It was millions of deaths. It was the knowledge that we had the A-bomb and were willing to use it. We didn't worry about their hearts and minds until we knew that we owned their sphincters.

In the current situation, Ahmadinejad of Persia is an elected president, and he is most assuredly preparing to war us. Hamas was "legitimately" elected in Palestine, and it is still committed to warring us.

Worst of all, Bush is trying to have it both ways. He insists that the new Iraq government is legitimate, but he is also trying to push Jaffari out of office.

If you're going to Wilson, you have to Wilson all the way. Whatever awful Mohammedan or terrorist regime takes power, it must be A-OK if it got there by an election certified by Jimmy Carter. You have to give it all the money it wants, and let it war you.

If you're going to LBJ, you have to LBJ properly and fully. Tell the Iraqi government that we put them in place, and their job is to do our bidding. It's too late for that, though.

As I've said before, the evidence of the last century is remarkably clear. Wilsoning fails, LBJing succeeds.
  ¶ 7:12 AM

  Fallaci again
Fallaci gives us the larger goal of the Arabs in the current war. (And yes, the enemy is primarily Arabs qua Arabs, secondarily allied with other sons of Allah.)

In her younger days as a globetrotting journalist in 1968, she interviewed Yasser Arafat and his rival George Habash, alias al Hakim, the founder of PFLP. From Arafat she got nothing but stupid shouting and spitting, but from Habash she got a chilling declaration of the full and final intentions of Jihad:

"Our revolution is a part of the world revolution. It is not confined to the reconquest of Palestine. The time has come to admit that we want a war like the war in Vietnam. That we want another Vietnam, and not only for Palestine but for all the Arab countries. The Palestinian problem is not an aside problem, a problem separated from the Arab Nation's realities. Palestinians are part of the Arab Nation. Therefore the entire Arab Nation must go to war against Europe and America. It must unleash a war against the West. And it will. America and Europe don't know that we Arabs are just at the beginning of the beginning. That from now on there will be no peace for the West. To advance step by step. Millimeter by millimeter. Year after year. Decade after decade. Determined, stubborn, patient. This is our strategy. A strategy that we shall expand throughout the entire planet."

Fallaci expands on this: "In short, the war waged through immigration, fertility, presumed pluriculturalism, EU Agreements. The Islamic holidays, the five prayers interrupting work, the halal meat, the face covered on the driver's license, to begin with."

This Mohammedan revolution by fertility is already well under way in Europe, as France has unfortunately discovered, but it hasn't even started in America. Among the American residents who get counted as Mohammedan, about 80% are actually Louis Farrakhan's followers, a racist cult that has only superficial connections to the Koran and no connection to Arabs. Though they certainly enjoy conducting pogroms against Jews, so far they haven't shown a desire to participate in the larger Arab Jihad. (The Beltway Snipers were not Farrakhanites, but converts to genuine Mohammedanism.)

So: Our local 'invaders by fertility' are instead Mexican. Seen in this light, I'm starting to harbor a heretical thought. Maybe we should be glad that our requirements for cheap and illegal labor are being saturated by Mexicans instead of Arabs or Turks as in Europe. Mexicans are not part of Jihad. They are not bloody Mohammedan murderers but devoted Catholics. The Virgin Mary inspires them to raise strictly disciplined and fiercely loved children. Allah inspires his followers to rape virgins. The Virgin Mary loves music and art, and has inspired the very best of both. Allah hates music and art, and his followers destroy both.

So: Europe and America both need fertile invaders as we become old and barren. Given the choice between simple Catholics and bloody sons of Allah, I'll take the Mexicans in a New York microsecond.

-----

Sidenote: I'll grant that Mexican BVM-influenced music and art are not quite up to Bach or Caravaggio. Still, they do create a whole lot of it, and it's all sort of innocent and sweet. Maybe, just maybe, we jaded post-Protestants could use a pull in that direction.
  ¶ 1:53 PM

  A couple thoughts about immigration...
Protesters in Seattle are chanting "We didn't cross the border, the border crossed us." In case anyone still doesn't understand their overall goal, this should make it clear. They want to undo the Louisiana Purchase. Okay then, if we let them have what they want, which the chickenshit cowardass Republicans in the Senate are perfectly willing to do, what will the net result be? Mexico will contain the entire western half of the North American continent. Which means that the entire western half of North America will quickly descend into abject poverty. And where will the Mexicans go for work then? You got it, they will still go into what's left of the United States.
  ¶ 11:20 AM

  Illuminating

Stan Marsh and Oriana Fallaci don't look much alike, to put it mildly.

But they say the same thing.

Here's a passage from Fallaci's latest book, The Force of Reason.

Today's secular Inquisition is shrewd, you see. It fights death penalty and instead of the body it tortures the soul. Instead of the pincers or the ropes or the axes it uses bloodless tools: newspapers, radio, television, journalists, politicians, unsucecessful academics, movie starlets. Instead of the jails controlled by the Holy Office it uses stadiums, squares, marches which -- taking advantage of freedom -- kill freedom. Instead of cowls (but often you see the cowls too) it uses djellabahs and chadors and the tracksuits of the rainbow-flaggers who call themeselves pacifists, or the blue suits and red ties of their puppet-masters (Members of the Parliament, writers, trade-union ringleaders, reporters, bankers, prelates. The new valets of the Holy Office, in short, the Fra' Accursios who serve a power smuggled in as anti-Power.) In other words, it has changed its face. But its essence is unaltered. And if you write that the Earth is round, you become an outlaw rightaway. A heretic to be burned.

South Park has been illuminating Fallaci's manuscript for the last couple of years, using an art form that may reach more Americans than Oriana's slightly out-of-phase English. At the end of most episodes Stan tells us that the Earth is round.

It will be interesting indeed to see what our modern Inquisitors do with next week's episode.  ¶ 3:28 PM

  'Nation of Immigrants'
The pro-illegal side (which includes most of the Beltway Republicans) is fond of saying "We're a nation of immigrants!" as a final and definitive argument.

Well, let's take a look. First, every nation except possibly Ethiopia is composed of immigrants. The human species apparently started somewhere in East Africa and spread over the earth in an uncountable series of migrations. Certainly every country in the Western Hemisphere is a mix of early Siberian immigrants and fairly recent immigrants from Europe and elsewhere. So this phrase doesn't describe the United States in any unique way.

Second, there's nothing in the Constitution that requires open borders or forbids closing borders. Favoring lots of immigration was an important policy in the late 1800's because we had a huge empty territory in the West that needed to be settled. Later on, as the frontier became full, we gradually closed the inlet valve. If we're going to use cultural imperatives from 1850 as the basis of modern policy, we should also bring back slavery and industrial sweatshops, and take away women's vote.

"Give me your tired, your poor..." is a poem, not a law of nature, for heaven's sake. If we're going to use poems from that period as the basis of policy, let's go all the way!

Underneath all the jabber, there is exactly one important and valid reason to favor well-regulated immigration: our mainly Protestant natives are reproducing below the replacement rate. Only the Catholics from Mexico are still having (and loving) new children. So we need to make it easy for them to settle here and assimilate. Current policy makes citizenship terribly difficult, and makes working illegally very easy. We need to reverse the reward/punishment pattern.
  ¶ 9:21 AM

  Libby and Wilson again....
The enemy media are predictably knocking Bush for one of the few really good and powerful things he's done: discrediting Joe Wilson. Unfortunately, because of the Byzantine Rove technique, Bush is left without a decent defense.

I've said this before, and it's even more relevant today:

End the New Tone, with its hyperclever attempts to please enemies without enraging friends. This is just another example of what happens when you try to make those 5-corner bank shots.

No more stealth, no more New Tone. Just tell us what you're doing and why. Friends of America will understand perfectly and will be happy; enemies will also understand perfectly and will be unhappy. What the hell is wrong with that?

In this case, the straightforward solution would have been to come out publicly just after Wilson's first article: "I'm declassifying this information to show you how Wilson is attempting to sabotage our war effort. If you in the Democrat media think I don't have the authority to declassify information, you should have criticized Bill Clinton when he declassified massive amounts of data on the following subjects [...] and the following dates [....]. Since you didn't criticize him, your attempt to criticize me will only show yet again that you are Democrat operatives, not journalists. Now here's the declassified information that disproves Wilson's assertions ......"

Because Bush, for whatever incomprehensible reasons, is unwilling or unable to behave like a normal rational leader, he has locked himself into this ridiculous position.
  ¶ 10:58 AM

  Pondering Moussaoui
Listening to a bit of Fox coverage this morning.

... Other captured leaders were quoted as saying he was "not right in his head."
That put a smile on Moussaoui's face ....

Now it's distinctly possible that Zac is truly wacko. But methinks his superiors are protesting a bit too much. We can't discount the alternative, which is a well-established bit of spycraft. If Zac is fake-crazy, then he's preventing us from taking his activities seriously. Part of those activities involved setting up or activating a cell in Norman. This probably didn't take much work, because Mohammedan radicals have been working in Norman since 1979.

Do I fully believe this? No, but over the years I've learned to pay some attention to my paranoid thoughts. In too many cases the reality has turned out to be worse than my thoughts.
  ¶ 6:18 AM

  The Viceroy speaks


Nice picture of Mexico's Emperor Vicente. In the background lurks the humble and obedient Señor Jorge Bush, the Emperor's viceroy para el Territorio Norteamericano.

Today Viceroy Jorge served his Emperor loyally and well:

"No one should play on people‘s fears or try to pit neighbors against each other. No one should pretend that immigrants are a threat to American identity, because immigrants have shaped America‘s identity."
  ¶ 7:51 PM

  Jury duty finished
Now that the jury experience is over, a few more comments.
-----

1.

Though I had to be on call for two weeks, I was only called into the courthouse for the first three days. [This is apparently typical.] Made it as far as the 'voir dire' stage twice. Neither of those cases came near any of my biases, so I couldn't honestly disqualify myself, but I was never selected.

Nevertheless, the entire two-week period was exhausting, because in recent years I've arranged my narrow little life for minimum stress, minimum expense, and maximum concentration. I'm thoroughly unaccustomed to the 8-5 routine, and being a nightowl, never performed well on that schedule anyway. So I've had to put creative activities on hold during these two weeks to avoid a wasted false start on a project; and also had to stay prepared for a possible series of long days away from home.

-----

2.

The television stereotype of juries (welfare recipients, culled for maximum ignorance) definitely doesn't apply in Spokane. Maybe it's true in Los Angeles and New York, but not here. The initial 'call group' on Monday morning was thoroughly randomized on every possible scale: age, gender, race, occupation and status. The assistant city manager, who actually runs the city, was in this group and had to take his chances along with everyone else.

I wasn't quite assuming the TV pattern, but was still surprised at the actual criteria for selection. Potential jurors who were directly acquainted with one of the parties were tossed, as you'd expect. But lawyers on both sides clearly wanted jurors who had experience with the situation in question, or knowledge of similar situations, whether the experience was positive or negative. Both sides preferred sociable and engaged jurors.

By the third day, the jury waiting room was a dour and morose place, because the chipper extroverts were all serving, and only the tight-lipped introverts were still on hold!

-----

3.

I briefly mentioned my previous experience on the wrong side of a corrupt court system in Ohio. Might as well tell it in some detail, because it accounts for most of my stress and dread, and shows why I'm so surprised by the overall competence and honesty of the Spokane system.

In March of 1969 (Jeez, 37 years ago!) the Bowling Green police made a massive bust, cracking up a 'drug ring'. Well, we weren't a 'ring'; we hadn't even known each other prior to arrest. The only thing we had in common was that we had all bought from a guy named Scott, who was never arrested. My roommate was never arrested, even though the only pot in our apartment was found in his room. Why? Well, just a random note, which I mention for no particular reason: he came from a prominent Ohio family, a name you'd recognize. Of course that couldn't have any possible connection with his continued freedom.

Out of the twenty or so 'ring members', only one had a previous conviction. He got out first. Why? Again mentioning some random facts: this guy had not been involved in left-wing politics, because he was on the BGSU football team. By another remarkable coincidence, he was let out of jail a week before practice started, and rejoined the team.

Most of the 'ring' (including me) spent six months in the walls, then served a few years probation and had our rights restored. Two guys stayed longer; their charge was the same, and I don't think they misbehaved inside, but I do know that they had been the most active and well-known leftists. These coincidences just keep piling up higher and deeper, don't they?

So the whole deal was basically political in both senses of the word. It served to advance the careers of several BG cops and prosecutors.

However: a couple years later, I heard that those very same BG cops ended up in jail themselves. Seems their enthusiasm for search warrants coincided with a tendency to take and sell various goodies from the searched premises.

Can I spell Schadenfreude? You bet.
  ¶ 7:36 AM

  LBJ had it right
Jury service appears to be finished, so I'm back.

Two items in today's headlines illustrate why the Kindler Gentler War doesn't work.

This story about Sergeant Michael Smith is especially irritating. Smith was among the prison guards at Abu Ghraib, and was convicted yesterday on several counts of doing his job properly and enthusiastically.

Smith said "Soldiers are not supposed to be soft and cuddly", and only regrets that he didn't learn how to play the game of satisfying the idiots above him. [Edit: Smith didn't say 'idiots'; it's just a factual observation.]

He should be promoted, not imprisoned.

-----

And the story of the Afghan Christian sentenced to death by the "new" Afghan government shows the deeper contradictions of the Wilson / Bush approach. By focusing on elections and human rights as the primary goal of war, we open the door for critics to say "Why did we fight if this is the result?"

And those criticisms are fully justified.

LBJ had a much cleaner and clearer approach. When human-rights types complained about the atrocious behavior of dictator Trujillo (in the Dominican Republic), LBJ famously responded "He may be an SOB, but he's our SOB."

That's all we should require of our planted governments. We should expect them to be firmly and solidly ours, and pay no attention to how they treat their people, unless they are likely to lose power by over-reaching.
  ¶ 8:59 AM

  Swarmer = complete embarrassment
Listening to Fox interview with a Major on the ground in the supposed "Air Assault" in Iraq.

This is embarrassing.

The Major says the operation was initiated by the Iraqi "partners", and that we haven't actually found or shot anything or anybody. Nevertheless, it was a "success" because the Iraqi army got some good practice.

Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ.

In other words, the Iraqi army has found a way to distract us and tie us down so their real friends can accomplish some other goal.
  ¶ 9:53 AM

  Jury duty
I got called for jury duty this week. The experience is naturally tiring and frustrating; lots of hurry-up-and-wait. Of course I won't give details of any cases, but just a couple of observations. The judges and lawyers I've seen here in the Spokane County system are uniformly competent and respectful of all sides. I'm pleasantly impressed, because my previous experience on the wrong side of the court system (in Ohio, 1969) gave a rather different picture. Even allowing for the obvious difference in viewpoint and age, I can see that those Ohio lawyers and judges were several steps below the Spokane bunch in general honesty and competence.

I doubt that any of these lawyers would commit such an elementary error as the failure in the Moussaoui case.

More broadly, I observe how the 'rule of law' depends on a general cultural agreement and a sense of reciprocity. Jurors are willing to be fair because most of us have seen and experienced fairness. When we expect the new Iraq government to try Saddam on the basis of 'rule of law' when we haven't even established basic security, we are expecting the impossible. He knows that he is still the ruler of Iraq, and he will take power again. Guaran-goddamn-teed.
  ¶ 6:54 AM

  City mouse, country mouse
The whole Dubai port fiasco has concluded, with a proper result. The biggest side-effect is to break open the oldest division among Americans, a division that cuts across the present party boundaries.

The unsophisticated folks tend to go with Churchill and FDR: the enemy is the enemy, and our task is to defeat him. Sophisticated folks go with Henry Ford and Neville Chamberlain: the enemy has many gradations, and we can do business with the 'moderate' segments of the enemy.






We can see now, more clearly than ever before, that Bush Junior stands with his father, closer to the Urban Sophisticate side of this divide, the Ford-Chamberlain side. This is why so many of us country folk are so thoroughly disappointed. It's not just a matter of class distinction, either. History shows unquestionably that the unsophisticated black/white approach wins, and the nuanced gray approach loses.
  ¶ 8:02 PM

  Good speech
Bush speaking at the National Newspaper Assn.... He should do more appearances like this, with questions from knowledgeable people who don't belong to the Beltway Treason Corps. When he gets passionate about certain things, he's mighty persuasive. "Our main threat is al-Qaeda [not any particular nation]" is a good point and a reassuring statement. On education, he's both passionate and correct.

Unfortunately, his basic Wilsonian notion of spreading democracy is a theory that history doesn't support, and the current experimental evidence isn't highly positive. What makes nations peaceful is not elections but contentment, a sense of relative equality, and usefulness.

When young males feel both useful and necessary, they stay calm. When that doesn't apply, young males get wild. When young males get wild, governments have a choice: use that energy for military adventures or crack down violently.

Al-Qaeda is a sort of short-circuit whereby young males from a warrior tradition, equipped with great inherited oil-wealth [i.e. maximal wildness and maximal uselessness] can spend tremendous amounts of energy and have a tremendous effect on the world, without involving a national government. Arab nations appreciate this short-circuit, because it simultaneously works on behalf of the Caliphate and spares them the trouble of planning their own military adventures.

The best way to avoid the basic problem is (1) Encourage traditional marriage in which the male both can and must provide for his wife and kids. (2) Insure jobs are available for those young providers. (3) Minimize unearned income, whether from oil or welfare.

None of this has any automatic connection to democracy; if there is a causal relationship, it's backwards from the Wilson / Bush model. In fact, a decent society, with the mechanisms needed for democracy, tends to grow under these same conditions. The conditions must come first, not the elections.
  ¶ 8:09 AM

  For example.........


Here are a few audio samples of the techniques I've been discussing. First, preparing the listeners for a connection with people of dubious [Dubai-ous?]friendliness. In this case OWI was getting Americans accustomed to an alliance with Brazilians and other South Americans. As usual I'm taking an episode of Fibber McGee, March 1942.....

Panamerican Day

Later in that season, a pleasant [temporary] character named Rosita was thrown into the mix; Rosita was the wife of a South American pilot being trained at the nearby military base. Other prime-time shows made efforts in the same direction.

-----

Second, here's Ed Murrow reporting from London in June 1940, describing Churchill who had just then taken office as Prime Minister.

Murrow

For the sake of you ever-vigilant spybots, here's a transcription of the most important passage:

"Mr Churchill can inspire confidence. And he can preach a doctrine of hate that is acceptable to the majority of this country. That may be useful in the next few months."

Dear bots, take careful note of that word HATE. Both Murrow and Churchill understood something that our modern Anglospheric politicians do not:
In war, you have to hate your enemy, not reward him.

-----

Third, here's a prime example of the doctrine of hate, as applied to the Japs:

Japs

Sidenote: Even in propaganda we couldn't credibly describe the Japs in that way now, because the Japs are now the "nation of mechanics" and Americans are the folks who "can't build a dollar watch." That's part of our long-term problem; we need to get our own "mechanics" back into the workplace and reward them properly. We also need to get our shipping system back under American control, perhaps by reactivating the Merchant Marine.
  ¶ 11:28 AM

  Babbin says it all.
Jed Babbin says it all, here.

I'd only add one thing: Clear communication doesn't require a unique genius like Reagan. FDR didn't have Reagan's smoothness and line-reading talent; if you listen to his Fireside Chats, you'll hear plenty of hesitations and mispronunciations. But unlike Bush, Roosevelt's words were powerful and effective, because his writers knew how to persuade and sell. They knew when to repeat, when to introduce new material, how to prepare the listener's palate for a bitter swallow.

Many good teachers and salesmen know the same techniques; there are probably two million Americans who could do the job. Why in the hell hasn't the Bush administration hired any of them? With billions of dollars to throw around, and the very existence of civilization at stake, why can't they find just one teacher, salesman, or advertising man who can sequence intelligently and write clearly?
  ¶ 9:38 PM

  Students showing us the way....
Some of the students at UNC are firmly attached to reality, and are protesting the standard "nothing to see here" line.

"This is innocent people being attacked by an SUV, driven by a man who was doing it for retaliation for treatment of Muslims around the world," said Jillian Bandes, with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. "To me, that spells terrorism."
Story here.

-----

Overall, this war is getting weirder and weirder. At the start, Bush was making the right moves in terms of overt and covert military response, but failing to mobilize the public. He seemed to assume that those nice TV networks would just support America and support Republicans like they always have. (In which parallel universe?) Or maybe he just didn't assume anything. In either case he missed the opportunity to lead the country, because it was more important for him to forgive his enemies, I guess?????? I'm trying VERY hard to avoid the less charitable and more paranoid explanations.

Since 9/11, the disconnect from reality has grown ever stronger. We have experienced 4 distinct Mohammedan terrorist incidents in that time. (1) Anthrax, killing 5 and injuring several others. Clearly part of the Atta group's activities, despite the FBI's instinctive need to blame the nearest 'Klansman type'. (2) The Beltway snipers, killing 13. Despite the considerable toll in death and disruption, this remains largely unmentioned because the killers turned out to be both black and Mohammedan, again disappointing the instinctive assumptions of the authorities. (3) The Hinrichs suicide-bombing at OU. Even if the authorities were applying proper wartime assumptions here, we'd probably never know what Hinrichs was trying to do. Normal deduction would conclude that he was trying to bomb the busses in the oval, but he might have suddenly decided to pull the chain early. (i.e., decided to "quit living" only for himself, instead of assisting hundreds of others to "quit living" along with him.) There's no doubt that he was acting on behalf of Allah, though. (4) This latest incident, the car-into-crowd at UNC. Again no doubt of the motives, but considerable puzzlement at the half-baked action. Possibly he was acting on impulse without planning for the actual environment; maybe he imagined the car zooming at full speed into the crowd, and was surprised to find so many obstacles. I'm sure his mentors will learn from the failed attempt.

----

Update via Fox News: "When asked if he was trying to kill someone, Taheri-azar said Yes." So I can drop the maybe's from that last paragraph.

-----

Another update, while listening to Steven Emerson: I forgot the Egyptian who shot the El Al ticket agent in Los Angeles. That makes 5, and I've probably missed a few others.

-----

Through all these weird war years, the media have committed their usual 'Dialog Journalism', a form perfected by NPR as an outgrowth of Leninist dialectic methods. Not all of today's 'journalists' may understand the original purpose, but it still works. Presenting every issue as a Dialog insures that the facts are lost in the noise. In every Dialog on the war, the media have given us two sides: (a) Hard left, pushing for total surrender. (b) A gentlemanly and reluctant representative of the Kindler Gentler Bush approach, claiming that the approach works because we "haven't been attacked since 9/11." Because the Leftist is committed to his cause, he can always shout louder and interrupt more often. Result: the viewer remembers only the Leftist side.

But the serious pro-war side doesn't even get a seat at the table. It's always "Surrender" on one side and "Fight Carefully and Sensitively" on the other.

In WW2, the Office of War Information insured that the only message we heard from movies and radio was "Fight harder!" This side has been totally absent from all public discussion in WW4. Until now.

Bravo, Jillian Bandes! Encore!
  ¶ 7:34 AM

  Commies copying Mohammedan methods
An under-reported story:

NAMPA, Idaho (AP) -- A woman drove her car into an anti-abortion rally outside of a Planned Parenthood, protesting what she called "vulgar" photos of an aborted fetus.

The incident happened at a local doctor's office where a Planned Parenthood clinic had recently been established. The clinic, which operates out of the office one day a month, does not perform abortions but does offer free birth control and emergency contraception.

Gail Mower, 52, of Nampa, on Friday drove her car onto the sidewalk and into the crowd of demonstrators after she became concerned over one protester's sign that depicted a "gruesome" picture of an aborted fetus, she told the Idaho Press-Tribune.

Mower said she wanted to park her vehicle in front of the sign to block it from the view of passing school children.

She ended up running over the protester's foot, wedging it between the tire and the sign. The demonstrator was not injured.

Another woman at the protest was holding a child and had to jump out of the way of the oncoming vehicle, witnesses said.

Whatever happened to American ingenuity? Commies borrowing the methods of Mohammedan terrorists! How dull. Why, in the old days, American lefties could invent their own protest methods. Comrades Friedan, King, and Alinsky were highly creative.

Oh well, I guess the copying goes both ways. Zawahiri and Osama have used plenty of propaganda techniques borrowed from our Commies, thanks to their special representative Adam Gadahn-Pearlman.
  ¶ 9:26 AM

  The bloody rain of 2001
During the monsoon season (July through September) of 2001, the west coast of India often experienced bursts of red rain. An astrophysicist gathered up usable samples of the water, and has recently published a paper with some analysis. The author, Godfrey Louis, seems to think the red material must be extra-terrestrial, but in fact the stuff appears to be identical to mammalian red blood cells. It's not clear why he didn't just submit a sample to an ordinary medical lab, which could answer the question easily!

If it's blood, the question of origin is really more interesting. The total amount of material is in the range of several tons, which means it can't be a flock of bats or mice that got caught in a tornado. Events of that sort do occur from time to time, resulting in brief local rains of fish, bird parts, or frogs.

But several tons of red cells, with no other bits and pieces, simply can't be accidental. The simplest functional explanation is a huge explosion in a laboratory. Were Osama's scientists in Pakistan testing ways to introduce massive plagues? If so, was this a deliberate 'injection' to the monsoon circulation, or an accidental explosion?

Original article here.  ¶ 6:53 PM

  Local notes
Hillyard in the news again. An old sad drunk decided to hijack a city bus -- at gunpoint -- to his favorite bar. After he got there, he walked in and fired some shots into the ceiling; the bartender and other patrons managed to wrestle him to the ground. Motive still unknown. Good video here; the bartender seems like a classy lady. The world could use more like her.

Personal: I'm probably crankier than usual lately because I'm trying to put together a new computer. Made the mistake of buying a 'barebones kit', because I already had some leftover hard disks and such, and wanted to amortize those investments. Definitely a mistake. Penny-wise, pound-foolish.

There was a time when I could build or assemble just about anything; in fact I built an Elf (1802) computer from total scratch, drawing and etching the circuit board freehand. Not any more. I don't have the tools or the 'junk box' of spare parts, and I've lost the sharpness and precision of youth. The latter realization is most likely the primary source of crankiness!
  ¶ 3:26 PM

  It's 1993 all over again.
Via Malkin:this story about an ATTACK BY AN ENEMY SOLDIER FROM IRAN on the campus of the University of North Carolina. The TV news networks are treating this as a disgruntled-student story. It is not a disgruntled student. It is an ATTACK BY AN IRANIAN SOLDIER ON AMERICAN TERRITORY. Doesn't matter if he succeeded in killing anyone. Most of the bullets and bombs in any war miss their intended targets. That doesn't make them anything other than bullets and bombs.

We are right back in 1993 with the Clinton approach. Treating enemy attacks as ordinary crimes. Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ. Haven't we learned ANYTHING? No.

----

Update: Sounds like the FBI is paying close attention to this one; perhaps more attention than they paid to the Hinrichs suicide-bombing at OU.

Meanwhile, Zawahiri's latest tape tells Mohammedans to avenge the Danish cartoons; the Fox News anchor-babe asks if we should take this threat seriously. No, of course not, idiot. You just finished reading a story about this Persian student who is taking the cartoons seriously. So I guess the Fox mindset is that we can just go back to sleep, confident that the enemy will take care of the serious stuff, maybe kill a few millions of us, no problemo, dude.
  ¶ 8:03 AM

  Like father, like son...
Bush Junior is having considerable success in India, where the people seem to like him. Not too surprising, when you look at what the Bush Sr - Clinton - Bush Jr economic policy has done for India. It's also not too surprising that Americans look askance at the same policy. Moving high-quality jobs from your own country to another country is bound to be appreciated by the recipient country and unappreciated by the victim country.

There won't be any solution to this problem as long as both political parties remain committed to 'free trade' and 'open borders', which means other nations are free to steal everything from us while we are too nice to punish them or ask for anything in return.

-----

A moment ago Fox News was replaying Bush's speech in Pakistan; he said something about reforming the 'Arab World', and the announcer cut in to clarify that Spokesjelly McClellan had corrected the phrase to 'Muslim World'. No, Bush had it right, and I suspect he knows it just as well as Colin Powell does. Our real enemy is not the entire world of Mohammed. The more recently converted countries like Indonesia and Nigeria are not the source of the Army of Allah, though they've certainly picked up the trend. Those non-Arab countries seem to enjoy the devotional parts of Mohammedanism, such as sticking your butt in the air five times a day like a dung beetle, but they don't really dig the more ferocious aspects of the Koran.

Piracy and aggression in the name of Allah are a long-standing Arab tradition. That's the problem.

Of course our ruling elites can't bring themselves to name the enemy with either label. They continue to slalom around the course, using weasel words like "Radical Islam" or "a tiny handful of bad apples". That's not how you win a war. You win by assuming the entire group to be guilty, and requiring the 'moderates' to separate themselves by concrete action.
  ¶ 8:09 AM

  Happy blogday!


Happy Blogday to Polistra!

One year on the web, and six faithful spybots have been reading this blog all that time. So to you faithful bots, keep watching for keywords; I'm sure you'll find plenty of them here. And in the wildly unlikely case that there are any human readers, thanks to you as well.

Polistra got a decent blogday present in the form of a new advertising campaign by the Nuclear Energy Institute. Ads began appearing on CNN last night; I'm pretty sure this is the first time nuke power has been openly advertised since the eco-tyrants made it unspeakable in 1979. Maybe we're finally back on the path toward energy independence now.

The NEI has a very nice website that asks and answers all relevant questions with plenty of documentation, and a lively group blog as well. Good show, NEI! Polistra is pleased.

-----

Technical note: In the strictest sense, Polistra hasn't been around for the entire year. At the start, the name simply referred to the location -- as described in the stupid 'About Me' paragraph -- and I was using a variety of Poser characters. The first few times I used this particular female character, I called her 'Spokesmodel', which seemed clumsy and immodest. Quickly, the title picture enforced a syllogism: If she is the one who inhabits Polistra's Mill, then she must be Polistra. As fictional characters will do, she gradually took on a personality which isn't always congruent with the [conscious!] personality of the author.

  ¶ 9:46 AM