Breakthrough in adult stem cells
The term 'Kyoto Protocol' may acquire a new and much more positive meaning!

Shinya Yamanaka and Kazutoshi Takahashi, at Kyoto University, have developed a new and nearly magical recipe for turning your own skin cells into 'pluripotent' stem cells, which can be re-inserted into the body to re-grow bad tissues and organs. Their method already works in mice, so it should (but not necessarily must) work in humans.

The Yama-Taka method does not require any sort of contribution from embryos, so it has no ethical problems.


1. Start with a scraping of skin cells.




2. Use a virus to force certain DNA code segments into the cells. These DNA segments tell the skin cells to 'de-mature' into a much earlier and less specific type of cell.




3. Insert the unspecified but personal cells into the desired spot. [I didn't want to do surgery on Polistra, so I had her insert the cells in a cartoonish way, which obviously won't work in reality.]




4. The immature personal cells will pick up the chemical signals from the surrounding cells, and will grow into new and healthy specialized cells, replacing lost or damaged tissues.



Worth noting: the Japanese are obviously not affected by our federal funding limitations or our ethical debates. They've simply found a good solution.

If American researchers haven't pursued this line, it's not because of Bush's limitations; it's because of their own slowness ... or perhaps because they are anti-religious. The more promising course happens to be the one that doesn't kill embryos. American and European researchers seem to prefer the one that does kill embryos. Have to conclude that they enjoy 'having the issue' more than they enjoy solving the problem.

Labels: Ethics

  ¶ 11:07 PM

  The Taste Test


Why can Dems get away with corruption while Reps can't? Pure bias is part of it, but there's a deeper factor involved.

Vested interest is always and properly the main factor in voting. The framers of the Constitution planned our system to use selfishness and vested interest as its main fuel. We're not supposed to 'vote in the public interest', and anyone who tells you to vote that way is hiding an entirely different agenda.

Selfish voting creates a basic problem, though.

Parties of the Left come bearing a cornucopia of concrete gifts. Things you can see and appreciate. Subsidies, welfare, special privileges for favored races and classes.

Parties of the Right come with empty hands. At best they can offer negatives and abstractions: we will stay out of your way; we will defend the country more competently; we will lower your taxes.

Both parties are jam-packed with smelly corruption.

The Left has so much more on the table, so many pretty and rich goodies to give us, that the corruption is swamped. We don't see it or smell it.

The Right can't swamp out the nasty smell. Negatives and abstractions don't have any nice aromas or pretty colors.

And when the party of the Right fails to offer a clear and competent image of those abstractions - can't fight a war properly, can't block lawsuits, can't limit spending, won't increase energy supplies - there is absolutely nothing to hide the nasties.
  ¶ 11:12 AM

  Junk science on the march
An interesting Initiative will be on the ballot here in Washington in November. It aims to discourage theft by governments. The Property Fairness Initiative, Prop 933, is mainly sponsored by the Wash Farm Bureau on behalf of farmers.

From the Farm Bureau's website, the main points:

We want politicians to think before they act. Initiative 933 will require politicians and agencies to:

1. Tell us why they want new regulations.

2. Identify the properties they want to regulate.

3. Identify how much damage they will cause to the use and value of private property.

4. Determine if voluntary, cooperative programs can accomplish the goal.

If the politicians and agencies then decide to damage the use and value of private property, they must follow the state Constitution and pay for the damage.

SPLENDID idea.

It broke into the news yesterday when a counter-group, sponsored mainly by ecofascists, issued a "scientific" study that "proves" the initiative won't work. This counter-group, based at Univ of Wash in Seattle, has "done the research" and "run the numbers", determining that the Prop will cost about $8 billion each year; they say it will bankrupt counties and cities.

Well, now. How does science work? By observation of reality. If the question involves a cause-and-effect relationship, scientists are supposed to run an experiment. But how do we run an experiment here?

Aha! We don't have to run an experiment. It turns out that Oregon passed a nearly identical proposition two years ago. Oregon is nearly identical to Washington in every way that matters: population, history, geography, economy, ethnic makeup, main industries, climate, political tendencies. So, did Oregon go bankrupt? Nope. Every time the proposition was used, the governmental entity backed off and revised or revoked the regulation.

That's science. We have a valid experiment, showing that the idea works exactly the way it was meant to work.

Despite all that, the academics at UW will certainly get the credit for doing a "scientific study" because they are speculating and using computer models.

This is a huge problem in today's world, not just in science but in news and culture as well. We have somehow picked up the axiom that theories and computer models are truth, while demonstrable, valid, and appropriate facts are irrelevant.  ¶ 3:06 PM

  Slow and Stupid part II.
Since I've started the theme, might as well carry it into today's Big Story, Mark Foley flirting with the boys.

Slow and Stupid: perfect description for Republican leaders.

Down to the basics. "What can I get away with?" is a question any human can answer by about age 3. Even dogs and cats can determine the answer to this question easily, when the punishment and rewards are consistent enough. And in this case the punishment and rewards have been totally consistent since about 1975. The media have been punishing Republicans for every hint of dirtiness, especially sexual dirtiness, without exception for thirty years. And the Republican elite STILL hasn't figured it out. I have no idea what goes through their heads: do they believe reporters are their friends? Do they think the Golden Rule applies? In either case, they are simply stupid. They are clinging to an idea that has no basis in reality.

Yes, the Dems can get away with anything.

Yes, that's terribly unfair.

No, it doesn't help you to point out the unfairness.

You're supposed to be leaders.

If you can't figure out a dozen ways to turn this constraint into an advantage, you don't deserve to be leaders.

The advantage is obvious even to a non-leader like me:

"We're the clean party."

This is important to many voters, but you can't make the claim unless your behavior confirms it. It's also important on a more basic level: Clean leaders can't be blackmailed, thus clean leaders are free to speak and act in controversial directions when needed.

-----

Footnote: When I say "clean leaders" I'm really saying "Mitt Romney".

  ¶ 11:50 AM

  Slow and stupid



The theme this week is slow and stupid. Mainly I've been working on graphics projects and simply didn't have enough spare neurons or spare blood pressure to think about politics. That's probably good anyway!

Both the slow and the stupid were amplified by heat: summer decided to stay an extra week after I took down the window air conditioner. It wasn't worth the effort to put it back in and take it back out yet again ... too much heavy lifting involved.

And, for the last few weeks my computer has clearly been ailing more and more, sometimes crashing with a Blue Screen Of Death, generally slowing down. Finally came to a [nearly] screeching halt this morning.

Luckily I'd backed up everything that matters, since I could see the problem coming. Also luckily, I kept the System Recovery disk this time. (When previous computer failed, I had no recourse because I had stupidly tossed the "unnecessary" disk.)

So it's back in order, running fast again. What apparently happened was a hardware failure in the modem, which was issuing more and more junk IRQ's, causing a pileup of automatic debug activity. New modem and fresh Windows install cured it.

However, stupidity is incurable. While I was sorting through CD's to find the System Restore disk, and while I was thanking lucky stars that I hadn't thrown away the Restore disk THIS time, I casually THREW AWAY THE INSTALLATION CD for a new modem I'd bought some time ago but never used.

Yes, that's right. At the same moment when I was intensely aware of the stupidity of tossing CD's, I tossed a CD.

Needless to say, this new modem was exactly what the computer needed.

But Providence was on my side (why, I don't know!) ... because I hadn't yet taken the trash out to the street when I realized the modem was needed. So I just had to wash some coffee grounds off the CD.
  ¶ 10:05 PM

  Start from the end.



One of the few things I've learned in life: When you want to perform a large task, start from the end, not the beginning. Figure out what the final product should do, what it should look like, and build a trial version that sort of works. Then gradually build and refine the middle parts, planting each in the final version.

If you start from the beginning, planning and building all the subparts before you assemble the total product, most likely you'll never finish. And if you do finish, you'll have a lot of useless features and functions that seemed to serve a purpose at some intermediate stage of your planning.

In our so-called 'debate' about this war, neither side is paying any attention to the final product: Victory.

The big story this morning is a leaked intel report showing that enemy activity has increased since we started fighting.

Well, yes, that's how it goes in a fight.

When the victim just lays back and enjoys it, the attacker doesn't have to fight much. When the victim fights back, the attacker has to fight more intensely. (Paraphrasing an old Confucius joke.)

As usual, our 'debate' is restricted to two sides, neither of which will lead to victory.

The D side says we should stop fighting, enjoy the rape, bear the child, and raise him as a good Mohammedan.

The R side says we should continue struggling in our cautious and sensitive way, being very careful not to actually injure the attacker, because other attackers will be more likely to hurt us if that happens.

What's missing? The V side. A Victorious Vision of what the world should look like when the attacker is dead. In fact, the entire concept of 'finished' is missing in the Rumsfeld / Wilson / Bush model. We just keep on struggling, while the enemy gradually impregnates us.

We could in fact create a 'demo version' of a World Without Allah in our own country if we tried.........

-----

Sidenote: Yes, I know the picture doesn't match the message. I was going to focus on the disgusting Rule Of Law Circus surrounding Saddam, who should have been killed as soon as we captured him. I ended up writing in a different direction, but Polistra still represents my overall mood today.
  ¶ 7:33 AM

  Utterly bamfoozled.


I must confess to being totally puzzled. Absolutely confused. Thoroughly at a loss. Utterly uncomprehending ... about the wall-to-wall coverage of Hugo Chavez and his insulting talk. All the Republican talking-point vendors are repeating his "sulfur" phrase over and over and over and over and over and over and over, and all the Republican talking-point vendors are saying the same things about it.

Look.

Chavez is our enemy. He doesn't like us. He says bad things about us.

We don't like him. We say bad things about him.

This is completely normal. This is dog bites man. This is not news.

I also fail to understand why it's more of an insult when he bites us in New York, as opposed to biting us in Venezuela.

When you see a fierce dog in front of your door, you should leave him outside.

When you see a fierce dictator asking for admission to your country, you should leave him outside.

If you let him in, you really can't complain that he growls and bites.

The problem here is not that an enemy has bad things to say about us.

The problem is that the Bush administration didn't have enough common sense to lock the door and leave him outside.
  ¶ 8:25 PM

  Going to the well
I notice that Ahmadinejad has been invited to speak at Columbia U in New York. Highly appropriate. Mahmoud's reign is centered on bringing the Hidden Mahdi out of his well. Columbia is the well of leftist evil in the US.

Columbia is where the new left started, and where its intellectual leaders Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward still generate new evil daily. Piven and Cloward are not public figures outside NYC, but historians of the Left like Fred Siegel and David Horowitz have documented their tactics fully. Not surprisingly, George Soros is closely involved in funding Piven-Cloward movements.

From a Horowitz article:

In their 1966 article, Cloward and Piven charged that the ruling classes used welfare to weaken the poor; that by providing a social safety net, the rich doused the fires of rebellion. Poor people can advance only when "the rest of society is afraid of them," Cloward told The New York Times on September 27, 1970. Rather than placating the poor with government hand-outs, wrote Cloward and Piven, activists should work to sabotage and destroy the welfare system; the collapse of the welfare state would ignite a political and financial crisis that would rock the nation; poor people would rise in revolt; only then would "the rest of society" accept their demands.

The key to sparking this rebellion would be to expose the inadequacy of the welfare state. Cloward-Piven's early promoters cited radical organizer Saul Alinsky as their inspiration. "Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules," Alinsky wrote in his 1989 book Rules for Radicals. When pressed to honor every word of every law and statute, every Judaeo-Christian moral tenet, and every implicit promise of the liberal social contract, human agencies inevitably fall short. The system's failure to "live up" to its rule book can then be used to discredit it altogether, and to replace the capitalist "rule book" with a socialist one.

Think about the left and its media 'swarming' on Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and the Geneva Convention for a nice modern example, funded of course by Soros.

So it's thoroughly appropriate for Mahmoud the Well-Digger to be speaking at Columbia. Our own apocalypse has been rising from the well of Columbia for decades, and those same leftists have been closely allied with Jihadis since 1968.
  ¶ 10:04 AM

  Battle of definitions


Polistra is still in mourning for la Fallaci, but she insisted on doing this picture. Which definition do you suppose will do more to advance civilization?
  ¶ 10:10 PM

  The. Clearest. Explanation. Of. All.
Via the Sixth Column blog, a long theological essay, which serves as an extension and exegesis of Benedict's short lecture. This essay, by the pseudonymous Spengler, is absolutely the clearest and deepest picture of the difference between Allah and Jehovah, and the FINAL explanation of why the followers of Allah cannot be reformed.

The core of the essay:

What mankind - Christian, Muslim and Jew, and all - demand of God is irrational. We want eternal life!

But what is it that God demands of us in response to our demand for eternal life? We know the answer ourselves. To partake of life in another world we first must detach ourselves from this world in order to desire the next. In plain language, we must sacrifice ourselves. There is no concept of immortality without some concept of sacrifice, not in any culture or in any religion. That is a demand shared by the Catholic bishops and the Kalahari Bushmen.

We are too comfortable, too clean, too squeamish, too modern to descend into the terrible space where birth, death and immortality are decided. We forget that we cannot have eternal life unless we are ready to give up this one - and this the Muslim knows only through what we should call the sacrament of jihad. Through jihad, the Muslim does almost precisely what the Christian does at the Lord's Supper.

Christians believe that Jesus died on the cross to give all men eternal life, on condition that they take part in his sacrifice, either through the physical communion of the Catholic Church or the empathetic Communion of Protestantism. From a Muslim vantage point, the extreme of divine humility embodied in Jesus' sacrifice is beyond reason. Allah, by contrast ... demands that all Muslims sacrifice themselves by becoming warriors and, if necessary, laying their lives down in the perpetual war against the enemies of Islam.

What distinguishes Allah from Jehovah and (in Christian belief) his son Jesus is love. God gives Jews and Christians a path that their foot can tread, one that is not too hard for mortals, to secure the unobtainable, namely immortal life, as if by miracle.

To Christians, God offers the vicarious participation in his sacrifice of himself through his only son.

That is Grace: a free gift by God to men such that they may obtain eternal life. By a miracle, the human soul responds to the offer of Grace with a leap, a leap away from the attachments that hold us to this world, and a foretaste of the World to Come.

There is no Grace in Islam, no miracle, no expiatory sacrifice, no expression of love for mankind such that each Muslim need not be a sacrifice. On the contrary, the concept of jihad, in which the congregation of Islam is also the army, states that every single Muslim must sacrifice himself personally. Jihad is the precise equivalent of the Lord's Supper in Christianity and the Jewish Sabbath, the defining expression of sacrifice that opens the prospect of eternity to the mortal believer.

To ask Islam to become moderate, to reform, to become a peaceful religion of personal conscience is the precise equivalent of asking Catholics to abolish Mass.

-----

There is one further difference that Spengler doesn't quite hit: The Mohammedan is not just required to sacrifice his own blood; he is required to sacrifice the blood of other people to achieve his own immortality.
  ¶ 8:57 PM

  Insane McCain
I've figured out exactly what's so weird about McCain's approach to torture, Geneva, etc.

There are two normal and rational responses when a parent or an older generation has endured significant hardship. Let's take the most stereotypical example.

Hardship: "Son, I had to walk 10 miles to school every day through snow, rain, mud and tornados."

Consequence 1: "So I'm not going to change anything. I want you to have the same experience so you can toughen up like I did."

Consequence 2: "So I'm going to let you ride the bus to school. I want you to have a better life than I did."

Neither of these responses is automatically better; either one could be the best for the son, depending on personalities and circumstances.

Is McCain taking either of these paths? No. He is saying:

"I had to endure terrible hardships as a prisoner. So I'm not going to change anything, because I want you [young soldiers] to have a better life than I did."

This is hopelessly nonsensical.
  ¶ 12:40 PM

  Rush's question
Rush is on a wonderful roll this morning, ripping McCain and Graham a new one or two. He just asked: "When have we EVER become like the enemy?"

Though the question was rhetorical, there is a real and informative answer. Twice in history we did in fact adopt some of the enemy's characteristics. Both times it was part of a 'long twilight struggle' in which we were more focused on 'winning hearts and minds' than on winning the war.

In the '30s, FDR was conscious of the appeal of Fascist ideologies; he was watching Fascism march across Europe without any actual fighting. He introduced government programs like Social Security not because they were the best possible solution to our problems, but because he had to co-opt the desire for big government. (The word "social", though it sounds nice, had a specific connotation understood in those times: avoiding riots and unrest.)

Later, as we competed with the Soviets, we built our Military-Industrial Complex in Soviet form. We felt that we had to match the Soviet emphasis on heavy industry and heavy weaponry, so our industries and schools came under government control and became regimented in an unnatural way. This also gave Soviet agents plenty of time to infect and corrupt our culture and courts, where they still hold power. The trend started to reverse when Reagan decided to use American strengths like innovation and individualism. At that point we were able to win the war, though the damage done by subversion (i.e. Federal judges assuming powers they don't hold) is still sabotaging our current war.

So: If we want to become more like the enemy, we should carry on with the Bush / Wilson / Rumsfeld approach. Fight carefully and sensitively, build schools and water systems for the enemy, focus on 'hearts and minds', obey the Leninist courts, settle in for a long patient competition, give the enemy 50 years to sabotage us and weaken our will.

I guarantee we will end up in Allah's razor-wire embrace if we continue along this path.
  ¶ 9:48 AM

  McCain's experience
A minor point perhaps, but it deserves to be countered.

I keep hearing, from commentators like Bill Kristol, the notion that John McCain's insistence on enforcing the Geneva Convention is 'justifiable because of his experience.'

No, it isn't. In fact his experience, processed through a mature mind, should lead him to the opposite conclusion. The Geneva Convention was already in force at the time when the North Vietnamese did horrible things to McCain. It didn't help him a bit, so a rational man would conclude that it isn't going to help anyone else. If he wants to save future soldiers from equally atrocious treatment, he should be looking in other places for the solution.

The best solution of all is to prevent future soldiers from having to fight vicious enemies. And how do we get there? We win this war speedily and decisively, then we strengthen our intelligence and defenses so future enemies will see only futility when they envision attacking America.
  ¶ 4:02 PM

  Reading the whole thing
Ratzinger's Regensburg speech is short and readable. He does in fact criticize the Mohammedan way of thinking, but he spends far more time and effort criticizing the Protestant sola scriptura approach and the modern post-Christian social-gospel mindset. Funny, I don't see any Lutherans or Episcopalians rioting or bombing churches in response. Wonder why?

His conclusion tells us what he's really after:

Here I am reminded of something Socrates said to Phaedo. In their earlier conversations, many false philosophical opinions had been raised, and so Socrates says: "It would be easily understandable if someone became so annoyed at all these false notions that for the rest of his life he despised and mocked all talk about being - but in this way he would be deprived of the truth of existence and would suffer a great loss".

The West has long been endangered by this aversion to the questions which underlie its rationality, and can only suffer great harm thereby. The courage to engage the whole breadth of reason, and not the denial of its grandeur – this is the program with which a theology grounded in Biblical faith enters into the debates of our time. "Not to act reasonably (with logos) is contrary to the nature of God", said Manuel II, according to his Christian understanding of God, in response to his Persian interlocutor. It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures. To rediscover it constantly is the great task of the university.

-----

Indeed an excellent point. Dialog is nice, I suppose ... though I've never seen any genuine effect from dialog. However! The middle of a war is simply not the time to propose a dialog.
  ¶ 11:31 AM

  Welcome back to Civilization, Benedict!
Since I've kicked Benedict XVI up one side and down the other for his shameful moral neutrality between Israel and Hezbollah, I need to praise him now that he has finally come to his senses. Especially because his senses appear to be responding to the irreplaceable Fallaci; and especially because he is doing exactly what I hoped he would do: aligning Rome and Byzantium against Mohammed by quoting a Byzantine emperor.

A passage from Fallaci's The Force of Reason:

Last August I was received in private audience by Ratzinger. A Pope who loves my work since he read 'Letter to a Child Never Born' and whom I deeply respect since I read his intelligent books. Morover, with whom I happen to agree in many occasions. For example, when he writes that the West has developed a sort of hatred toward itself. That it no longer loves itself, that it has lost its spirituality and risks to lose its identity too. ... This is also why I state that, in selling itself to theocratic Islam, secularism has missed the most important appointment offered to it by History.

And in doing so it has opened a void, an abyss, that only spirituality can fill. It is also why in the Church of today I see an unexpected partner, an unexpected ally.... Unless, of course, the Church too misses its appointment with History. Something I don't foresee, though. And I don't becuse, in reaction to the materialistic ideologies which have characterized the century we just left, the century ahead seems to me marked by an inevitable nostalgia or irresistible need of religiousness.

In other words, you can't replace an evil religion with an empty theory like democracy. You have to replace it with a good religion, and the Pope is best positioned to start such a replacement.

-----

Later: Unfortunately, the Vatican is backing off in the face of violence by Mohammedan savages, issuing "sincere regrets" that Mohammedans have "misinterpreted" Ratzinger's remarks.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

The CORRECT response is "I said you're violent savages. Thanks for proving my point so quickly and enthusiastically!"
  ¶ 8:54 AM

  Traitors
Lindsey Graham, John McCain, John Warner. Yeah, you.

You are all traitors and should all be, at the very least, ejected from Congress.

Preferably tried for treason.

You are attempting to give legal protection to the enemy.

If legal protection isn't a form of aid and comfort, then what is it?

How is this any different from the act of a spy or saboteur?
  ¶ 8:37 AM

  Fallaci is gone


The brightest light of Civilization is extinguished.


Malkinhas full details.
  ¶ 8:18 AM

  Desecrating cemeteries
In general, I don't bother to speak when I have nothing new to say. So I haven't bothered to comment on the story about the Taliban we failed to kill, because even the Republican team loyalists are breaking ranks to criticize this idiocy. Just after the ABC movie properly knocked both Clinton and Bush Junior for letting Osama run free, we hear that Bush Junior still hasn't figured out the basics. Killing the enemy is a pretty good way to defeat the enemy. Shouldn't be so hard to understand, huh?

However, there's one specific application of the same notion that I haven't heard yet.

If we really want to prevent mosques and cemeteries from being desecrated, we should make it a special point to kill the enemy in mosques and cemeteries. After he realizes that these places will no longer serve as shelter, he will stop using them. Then they will be free of desecration.
  ¶ 8:24 PM

  Try a little pettiness.


News item: All of the Segway scooter thingies have been recalled to fix a software glitch. That's fine... happens to the best of us.

What really caught my attention was that the total number of Segway scooter thingies is 23,500.

Remember the hype when the Segway was introduced? It was The Next Big Thing, The Biggest Invention Since Fire, The Universal Transport Device.

After all that hype, you inevitably have the subconscious feeling that there must be millions of them, even if you've never actually seen one. Nope, not millions. 23,500.

My courseware has sold nearly twice that many copies, without any hype.

Schadenfreude? You betcha.
  ¶ 1:37 PM

  Time capsule

Apropos of nothing in particular.... This little song is neither grand nor classical, but it's simply a perfect gem, perfectly performed here by Buddy Baines and the Blue Seal Boys in 1947. If some future dhimmis want to know what Christianity was all about, this song probably sums it up as well as anything.

Listen.  ¶ 10:39 PM

  Give us Romney. Now.
Mitt Romney hasn't spoken much lately; must admit I was beginning to drift toward Newt as the more likely candidate in '08. (Right now would be better, but we unfortunately don't have that choice.)

Granted, Romney has been busy governing a big state, with lots of corruption to dig up; and Newt has nothing better to do than to appear on TV. Still, once your hat is in the ring you really have to keep your words in the public ear.

Romney has finally found time to speak on the war, and he has outdone himself. A brief passage:

I'd like to talk about doors for just a minute.

When I was little, my boxer dog's bark meant that Dad was coming through the back door. He was finally home, and the fun could begin.

When I became a married man, walking through the kitchen door was the happiest moment in my day. Everything that had been occupying my concerns was suddenly unimportant.

...

Today, we mourn because of doors that no longer open, open to fathers and mothers fresh from work; open to sons and daughters home for dinner; open to husbands and wives waiting an evening's embrace.

Because crazed fanatics broke down the fragile doors of their Boston-based aircraft, the doors of so many, many lives are now empty and shadowed.

It is hard for our minds to contemplate a human darkness so vile that it celebrates murder and destruction of innocent lives.

The whole thing in PDF form here.

Splendid writing. He's not trying to sound like Churchill, not trying to sound like Lincoln [which Bush unfortunately tries, only to sound foolish], not imitating anyone except himself. Still, the subject and tone resonated with something I'd read before ...



This was part of a long series of ads by Nash during the war. Various subjects, various goals, but all written perfectly, and all had those eyes. Romney's father took over Nash after the war, and pulled it up from a marginal 'independent' to [briefly] overtake Chrysler as the #3 automaker.

I suppose the similarity could be coincidental, but I suspect there's a sort of cultural inheritance at work here. Connected or not, this is the type of speech we need from our leaders. Emotional, yes. Teddy bears on the fence, no.

-----

I want Romney, and I want him NOW!
  ¶ 1:01 PM

  That's better.


One little superstition I've acquired over the years: bad things and good things don't come in isolation. Bad things tend to come all at once, and good things come all at once.

This morning I finally heard from the publisher of my courseware, asking me to start revisions toward the next edition .... thus calming my fears about the future of the courseware. This afternoon I finally got a reply from IRS to a request I sent many months ago, for a photocopy of my last 1040. In the meantime, the need for the photocopy had gone away, but the long delay had me worried. Wasn't sure if I had signed the return, etc, etc, etc.

Two long-term nagging worries relieved in one day. Not bad.
  ¶ 4:22 PM

  Undiscussables
Last week Tammy Bruce did a two-hour interview on C-Span. Interesting from start to finish, because she's one of the few genuinely independent thinkers in the public realm. One small point, though, made a tremendous impression. It's an idea I've never heard before.

Discussing the importance of free speech, she mentioned that Germany has made all discussions of Nazism illegal. Why is this a problem? Not just because it drives such discussions underground; that effect is well-known.

Bruce's new point: the prohibition prevents Germans from knowing whether they have actually changed their mind.

If an idea is no longer heard, there are two possible causes: either the culture has truly abandoned the idea, or the culture punishes such discussion. If the silence is caused by legal or cultural prohibition, there's no external way to determine whether this idea has actually gone out of common currency. This is a recipe for unpleasant surprises when the idea gets re-ignited.

Starting with the McCarthy hearings, our Leninist masters have succeeded in turning off discussion of a wide range of subjects. Not quite punishable by law, but certainly punishable by loss of career and credibility. Using Bruce's logic plus a bit of engineering mentality, this is a severe problem because a representative system needs to have good feedback about what the people are thinking. You can't really tell whether your laws are working if entire segments of the world are undiscussable.

As long as such prohibitions are only cultural (as they are in America) they can be broken by a rare courageous public figure, who may end his career but won't end up in jail. For instance, Newt broke the prohibition on discussing how welfare ruins black lives. He paid a heavy price for breaking the rule, but his truth led to a real change in laws and thus to a real improvement in black lives. More recently, Tom Tancredo broke the prohibition on discussing illegal immigration. It remains to be seen whether this new discussion will lead to any action.
  ¶ 8:30 AM

  No user-serviceable parts
Apologies for lack of posting. I've been busy with graphics projects, trying to develop a second source of income. So far I've survived well enough on the royalties from college courseware. And the product continues to sell well, so by the normal workings of a free market I could count on it for a few more years. But it looks like the allegedly Republican Congress is getting ready to investigate the textbook industry for daring to earn a living. This won't kill the industry, but it will do harm. So I'm trying to get ahead of the potential long-term loss.

-----

I'm voting all Democrat this year. Better to have honest Commies than Commies posing as capitalists. Both parties are in a race to ship our entire economy to Mexico, but at least the honest Commies will give us welfare afterward.

Who knows, maybe the alleged Republicans will actually learn something ... No,that won't happen.

-----

Anyhow:



Polistra is demonstrating two of the models I'm developing.

Making digital models is not only fun but (slightly!) educational. In researching the wringer washer, I learned that Maytag continued making them until about 1988, and Speed Queen is still making them in Saudi Arabia. I also learned that two of our major appliance factories are about to move to Mexico. Thanks, alleged Republicans.

Wringer machines, though they've become iconic of that bygone age when Americans actually made and repaired things, weren't around for all that long in America. They became popular in 1920 and faded soon after the first spin-dry automatic machine was released in 1940. It wasn't so much the 'automaticity' of the new type as the danger of the wringer that impelled the change. Amazingly, this happened without the assistance of lawsuits or Consumer Product Safety Commissions! How in the world could housewives have figured out on their own that losing fingers was no fun? Come to think of it, the washing machine would never have been invented if lawyers had been in charge back then. We'd still be beating clothes against rocks in the river, because you can't sue a river.

Wringer machines remain popular in parts of the world with limited plumbing, because they don't require connections to water lines, or even electricity. You can fill them with a bucket and drain on the ground, and a gas motor or even pedal power will suffice to run the agitator.

Moral of the story: We can't let simple direct technology go extinct.

Operating "off the grid" is the most obvious advantage. We would be less vulnerable to Allah's Army if we could keep running without complete and total dependence on our poorly maintained infrastructure.

Another more subtle advantage has to do with human wisdom and training. Polistra can see what's happening to her clothes, and she can put soap or bleach in at any point or pull out a delicate item at any time. In the process she learns something about clothes, about dirt, and about mechanisms. You can't do that with modern push-one-button technology. The machine decides when to dispense the soap, and when to let you open the door. You can't see or control any of the operation, so you don't learn anything.

People who use simpler technology become wiser and more independent. They acquire COMMON SENSE and humility about the workings of the world.

-----

One last (less important) observation. Look at the levers on the washer and the space under the sink. Kitchen equipment of the 1920s was designed to be used by imperfect people. The levers were big enough to see and hold, and you could sit down while doing dishes. The pipes and valves were out in the open where you could repair them easily.

All modern machines are designed for Japanese youngsters, who have superior visual perception and agility. They can manage a bank of unmarked little rectangular buttons on an unmarked black surface.



Look at the tiny pictures pasted on the surface of the cell phones, not to mention the multitudinous objects on the faces and elsewhere. It's a scientific fact: Japs perceive the world differently. They can see and remember a full range of details all at once, while Caucasians tend to focus on one central thing.

So, why do we continue to buy stuff that is effectively a cruel Jap joke on us [comparatively] big-fingered semi-literate dim-visioned Americans? We need to return to machines that were designed FOR Americans and built BY Americans.
  ¶ 11:22 PM

  Islamofascism and cognitive dissonance
I've been sort of waiting for Rush or another commentator to make this point. Haven't heard it, so I'll put it on the record.

There's a very specific reason why 'islamofascism' elicits such a screechy response from American leftists.

Any time you hear an explosive and screechy response - [from someone who is normally calm] - some version of cognitive dissonance is usually at work. The screech arises from the friction of two deeply-held but inconsistent beliefs rubbing together in the brain.

In this case, the old left was proud of its role in resisting Hitler, even though it was purely accidental. (If Stalin and Hitler had remained allies, the left would have supported Hitler, but they're still entitled to celebrate.) The new left continues to use the term anti-fascist on all of its protest signs, even though their beliefs are MUCH closer to Mussolini than to Marx. The post-1968 left relies on Identity Politics, which Mussolini called Subjectivism: the notion that different races, classes, and genders have mutually incompatible forms of thought, and can never understand each other. When you start from this axiom, you inevitably end up with some form of genocide. And for separate reasons, the genocided group always ends up being Jews.

This inconsistency has been exposed by several old leftists, such as Todd Gitlin and Fred Siegel, and it's certainly an active 'pressure point' in the mind of every thinking leftist.

Welding Islam and Fascist into one word forces the leftist to think: "I'm for those poor oppressed non-privileged Muslims, but above all else I'm against Fascism, but I know those poor oppressed Muslims are actually close to Fascist, but I know my own beliefs are also close to Fascist ...." Screech!

Somebody in the Second Ford Administration - perhaps Tony Snow ? - is definitely on the ball in choosing and pushing this word.

-----

Incidentally, Rush himself suffered an interesting spasm of cognitive dissonance a week ago, when a caller tried to push the idea that democracy won't work on Arabs. Rush didn't even let him finish a sentence, but started screeching, calling the fellow a racist and a bigot. We can conclude that Rush is worrying about this point, but can't break loose from his team loyalty to fully acknowledge it.
  ¶ 10:41 AM

  Vichy Christians
Several 'mainstream' churches have issued a ferociously anti-Israel position statement, which is so round, so firm, so fully packed with standard Leninist rhetoric. Not really surprising - you can always count on the WCC to find the anti-civilization side - but the stern and uncompromising tone is remarkable:

We call upon Christians in Churches on every continent to pray for the Palestinian and Israeli people, both of whom are suffering as victims of occupation and militarism. These discriminative actions are turning Palestine into impoverished ghettos surrounded by exclusive Israeli settlements. The establishment of the illegal settlements and the construction of the Separation Wall on confiscated Palestinian land undermines the viability of a Palestinian state as well as peace and security in the entire region.

We call upon all Churches that remain silent, to break their silence and speak for reconciliation with justice in the Holy Land.

Therefore, we commit ourselves to the following principles as an alternative way:

We affirm that all people are created in the image of God. In turn they are called to honor the dignity of every human being and to respect their inalienable rights.

We affirm that Israelis and Palestinians are capable of living together within peace, justice and security.

We affirm that Palestinians are one people, both Muslim and Christian. We reject all attempts to subvert and fragment their unity.

We call upon all people to reject the narrow world view of Christian Zionism and other ideologies that privilege one people at the expense of others.

We are committed to non-violent resistance as the most effective means to end the illegal occupation in order to attain a just and lasting peace.

With urgency we warn that Christian Zionism and its alliances are justifying colonization, apartheid and empire-building.

Article here.

Note that the Roman church isn't part of this particular statement, but Maledict the Sixteenth Imam has already made his pro-Osama position clear.

I'm not any sort of believer; I just think civilization is better than barbarism. So I find myself solidly on Pat Robertson's side.

Judaism and Christianity were responsible for constructing our civilization, and it's disloyal, bizarre, and suicidally insane for nominal Christians to take the Mohammedan side in this war.
  ¶ 4:11 PM

  Long = Lose
Bush/Wilson is giving a pretty good speech right now at the American Legion. Clearly trying to pull the historical strings together. Aside from the mis-aiming at democracy instead of civilization, there's one deeper, more critical, and ultimately fatal flaw in his approach.

A long war is a losing war.

For one thing, Americans simply don't have the patience, or the political stability, to keep up an effort for very long. We have to get it done fast or not at all. And we've shown in the past that we can get it done fast, if properly mobilized. Unfortunately, Bush/Wilson has not taken even one of the necessary steps to mobilize the country.

Most importantly, the Army of Allah is fighting a war of attrition. If we fight slowly, carefully, and sensitively, we are allowing, even encouraging, every form of attrition to work for the enemy. Demographic penetration, Leninist sabotage, oil shocks, economic stresses, and propaganda.
  ¶ 8:55 AM

  Bravo, bravo, bravo.
Bravo to Tucker Carlson for jumping right down the neck of an FBI guy on the subject of Warren Jeffs. About damn time somebody called the bluff of the Fumblers, Burners and Inquisitors.

For some reason that I genuinely can't understand, the Feds have had it in for Mormons since 1840. Our only official pogrom was against Brigham Young, and the FBI still has a hard-on for polygamists.

If you really want to worry about a religion that practices polygamy and arranged marriage, there's a much larger one that's been around for 1300 years, and is actively killing Americans by the thousands, and actively enslaving Africans and Asians by the millions. Obviously the FBI doesn't want to touch this religion; when members of this religion kill Americans in places like Seattle and San Francisco, official FBI spokesmen talk about "individuals who have mental issues against other individuals."

-----

And to be fair and balanced, bravo to Frank Gaffney for jumping down Carlson's neck in the same hour of the same program. Carlson is smart enough to understand the real strategic reasons for fighting in Iraq. (Which are not the idiotic reasons given by Bush.) Those actual reasons have been written clearly and truthfully in many books and magazines, including the same mags that Carlson sometimes writes for. He has absolutely no excuse for taking the leftist line on this question.
  ¶ 1:29 PM

  More Parker


Polistra continues to study Robert Parker's book avidly. Oops, perhaps a bit too avidly.

At any rate, here's another bit of info that seems to have been lost in modern times.

Part of Bush/Wilson's justification for his profoundly stupid theories of democracy is the example of Turkey.

So, how was Turkey transformed from a backward totally Mohammedan country to a marginally modern, marginally democratic country? Was it by Free And Fair Elections Certified By Jimmy Carter? Nope, it was by Kemal Ataturk's personal tastes and brutal force:


That same afternoon, as he was drinking with his ministers, the jazz music stopped. Ataturk called for the band leader and said, "Why have you stopped playing?"

The band leader bowed low and said, "But, Highness, the muezzin on the minaret of the mosque outside is calling the faithful to prayer."

Ataturk said, "To hell with the mosque." That night, workmen tore it down brick by brick.

...

Ataturk put Turkish nationalism on a par with the most violent. Under his direction a racial theory was formulated which makes the teachings of Dr. Rosenberg in Germany seem pale by comparison.

Schoolbooks told young Turks that almost all the culture and civilization of the world was of Turkish origin. These books declared it was the Turks ... who sent out the founders, the inspiration for the Babylonian, Syrian, Egyptian, Greek, and Roman civilizations.

The moral: Mohammedanism is strong stuff. You can't replace it with a weak setup like democracy.

Later, Parker describes how the Turks played both sides against the middle in WW2: taking huge amounts of arms and aid from Britain and America, then giving us nothing useful in return - - - refusing to allow the Allies to use Turkish territory as a base. Sound familiar?

We just don't learn a goddamn thing from history.
  ¶ 8:45 PM

  Unthinkable, unexplainable. Mmmmm-hmmmmmm.
Another mysterious random attack on Jews by a random crazy individual who just happens to be Mohammedan. This act of war in San Francisco sounds like an echo of the Chapel Hill car attack a few months ago, except more effective.

Useful Idiot Newsom says:
"These are the things, these are so senseless. They're utterly inexplicable. They're impossible to rationalize," Newsom said afterward. "The fact that this individual felt compelled for whatever reason to be determined to do what he did is beyond imagination."

Gavin dear boy, you really need to start thinking about these things. I know the elite Jews in San Fran will respond just as dhimmily as the elite Jews in Seattle did to the Haq Attaq, so you won't suffer in electoral terms. But that doesn't excuse your idiocy.

The soldier who made this attack was an Afghan. One of his Afghan neighbors said:"I can't believe an Afghan would do that? The kids grow up here and some of them change. They are not Afghan anymore."

Reminds me of the passage I quoted below about overseas Germans responding to the call of Hitler in the '30s. Until they were 'galvanized' by Hitler's message, they were just sane and ordinary people.

---

Later: Obviously I wasn't thinking carefully enough. Newsom is well beyond Useful Idiot, and San Francisco is well beyond dhimmi. When Newsom ran off his long list of unimaginables, he was speaking disingenuously and sardonically, in standard leftist public-key cipher. His underlying text, understood clearly by all Correct-thinking San Franciscans, goes more like this: "We are all Omeed Aziz Popal now. We are all Afghans now. All of us, whether Wymynn or Individuals of Alternative Gender Assignment, were with Omeed when The Rage Of The Inarticulate led him to commit his noble protest against AmeriKKKan Imperialism and the Zionist Bullies. We will all suffer with Omeed when he spends three horrible days in AmeriKKKan-Zionist Imperialist Concentration Camp, and we will all help Omeed to escape to a more humane (or should that be hupersone? No, humane) part of the world when the ACLU gains his total pardon after three days."
  ¶ 8:14 PM

  WW3? WW4? Or just 2.01?


I've been reading Headquarters Budapest by Robert Parker, published in 1944 when the Germans were starting to lose but not yet clearly defeated. Parker was an AP reporter, back in those wonderful days when AP reporters were on our side.

The book tells how Hitler took over the 'little countries' of Eastern Europe with very little military action.

We know that the main leaders of Jihad are apostolic successors of Hitler, and David Horowitz has just now revealed George Soros's fascist connections in prewar Hungary. I'm starting to wonder if we are currently fighting Service Release 2 of World War 2, not a brand new war.

- - - - -

Here's Robert Parker interviewing Otto von Erdmansdorf in 1939, just after the Hitler-Stalin pact:

A member of the Prussian aristocracy, von Erdmansdorf had served German diplomacy for twenty years before Hitler came to power. He told his friends he abhorred the Nazi regime - but he served it faithfully. ...

"And what do you think will happen if war comes?" I asked von E. "France and Britain will probably fight alongside Poland."

The German minister swung around in his chair.

"I think, if war comes," he said slowly, "that Germany must lose."

The Hungarian newspapermen stared at him.

"I think Germany will lose if war comes now," repeated the German envoy, "but we will win the next one."

I asked him to explain.

"Yes," he said. "We will be defeated in this war as we were defeated in the last war. But it will be only a token defeat as it was the last time. Just as in 1918, France and Britain will be terribly weakened. Germany has greater recuperative powers. We will recover faster the next time than we did the last time. On the other hand, the French and English will find themselves worn out. They will be dying nations even in apparent victory. Then, the third time, our job will be very easy."

...

I asked him whether Germany did not fear the power of the United States. The Hungarian editors nodded their heads as if joining in my query.

"No", said von E, "not in the long run. For you Americans don't know what you want."


He was wrong about the token-ness of the defeat, but he just might have been right about the persistence of the German imperial compulsion.

Even if Germany is not quietly pulling the strings this time, Jihadis have copied most of the Nazi methods.

1. Economic war.

First the Germans gradually pulled the 'little countries' into total dependence on German trade. One cute trick: German businessmen and trade reps would buy up huge quantities of wheat and other raw materials at very high prices, then - often but not always - would fail to pay the debt. This made the 'little countries' reluctant to displease Germany, because their farmers and businesses stood to lose huge amounts of money if Germany pulled out entirely.

The Germans had long understood the possibilities of illegal currency markets in the Balkans. Their operations in dollars helped bring on the confusion and panic which later made some of the little countries easy victims for German diplomacy and arms. Loot from Poland and other northern countries was sold by the Nazis through Southeastern Europe for local currency. The proceeds, carefully manipulated on the illegal markets, brought them control of much of the Balkans' industry. Hitler's operations on Balkan black money markets brought him large dollar balances in the United States. The dollars were transferred to American citizens of German extraction and were used to finance Nazi propaganda and Nazi organizations in America.

Modern methods differ in detail, but the currency manipulation sounds awfully familiar. Think of OPEC, China's ownership of America's debt, hedge funds, Islamic charities. Most of all, think of George Soros.

2. Demographic war.

The other big powers had their spy organizations but Hitler had a tremendous advantage. In almost every country he had sizable German minorities. Established for many generations, they could be relied upon to spy for the Fatherland. ... For centuries German minoriites had lived quietly in their adopted countries. It was not until Hitler and National Socialism came along that members of these minorities became conscious of their German blood. The younger Germans in the Balkans were especially taken in by the Fuehrer's talk of racial superiority ... the German minorities felt their pride bolstered by Hitler's assurance they were members of the master race. These young Germans made excellent spies and saboteurs. More than a year before the German invasion of Yugoslavia, members of the German minority were busily measuring and mapping bridges, strategic highways and railways. ... German-speaking Hungarians, Yugoslavs and Rumanians were conscripted into the armies of the countries where they lived. Some of them became officers. Nearly all of them made regular reports to the German General Staff.

I don't really need to point out the connections here, do I?

3. Terrorism.

After WW1, Italians asserted the Peace Conference had cheated them out of the Dalmatian coast of the Adriatic. ... Mussolini never renounced Italy's claim to the coast, but the new Yugoslavia was tough enough to discourage il Duce from making a full-dress war. So he hired Ante Pavelich [in 1927] to bust up Yugoslavia from the inside. Installed in a luxurious villa in Turin, Pavelich directed the activities of the Ustachi Band through a lieutenant in Croatia. Mussolini furnished the guns, bombs, and plenty of cash. ... At least fifty train wrecks in Yugoslavia were pinned on the Ustachi in the years between 1927 and 1941. A dozen public buildings were bombed. Nearly five thousand Serb and Croat officials were ambushed and shot.

- - - - -

Is Germany the puppetmaster? It certainly played a direct part in hosting the 9/11 boys, and Andreas Strassmeir played a shadowy part in the OKC bombing. The German Pope has a Nazi history just like Soros, and has taken a shamefully pro-Mohammed position. So far Germany has been conspicuously unharmed by the Sons of Allah.

This doesn't add up to anything solid yet, and I certainly don't see how Germany would benefit, but my lack of vision doesn't prove anything either way!

One thing is for sure: the Army of Allah, and its Leninist supporters in the West, are following the Mussolini and Hitler instruction manual in remarkable detail.
  ¶ 10:55 AM

  Homegrown terrorist, Qaeda link, foiled in Spokane.
Getting mighty close to home.

An anti-terrorism task force is investigating a man's reported jailhouse claims of ties to al-Qaida and a plan to blow up a state Department of Social and Health Services building.

While in the Spokane County Jail earlier this month, the 18-year-old reportedly told fellow inmates that he also intended to set off a bomb at the upcoming Pig Out in the Park event and set off a second device when police responded, authorities said Wednesday.

Evidence recovered so far after three search warrants were served includes two loaded ammunition clips for an AK-47 semiautomatic rifle and a laptop computer reportedly containing an al-Qaida training manual, said Norm Brown, a spokesman for the Inland Northwest Joint Terrorism Task Force, which is investigating the case.

...

Investigators took the threats seriously because the man has traveled to Morocco twice in the last two years, Brown said.

His name, not given in this online article, is Anthony Garvey. The FBI has managed to hold him in the local insane asylum for 90 days on some sort of committment, which strikes me as a smart move.

More detail here.
  ¶ 8:44 AM

  Remember who invented chess!
I've hit this point before but didn't take it to the logical conclusion. Try it again:

When a criminal (individual or nation) wants a weapon, we don't start with the assumption that he must invent, develop, and build the weapon. We start with the assumption that he can buy the weapon. This is true for your ordinary gangster like Tyrone Booker, and it's true for the more exotic criminal like Persia.

Since Persia can buy nukes from China, Russia, or North Korea just as easily as Tyrone can buy his 9mm from the local Crips or Bloods retailer, we should start with the assumption that Persia already has all the weapons it wants.

In that case, what's all the kerfuffle about "peaceful development"? Why go through all this UN junk? Well, maybe it IS just peaceful development, and maybe Persia can prove the point.

This way, the rest of the world makes the first move.

This way, Persia can pose as the aggrieved victim, who is "justified" in responding with full force.
  ¶ 8:24 AM

  Sunrise

Well, it's sunrise in Tehran, 8/22.

Polistra thinks it's a good time for some serious prayer, since Western governments have totally abdicated their duty to defend Western civilization.

If this turns out to be nothing but Persian bluster, we'll exhale ... but the problem won't disappear.
  ¶ 8:02 PM

  Polistra's Prescription
Tired of the Long Twilight Struggle? Tired of watching enemy judges tell our "president" what to do? Tired of seeing our "president" obey those judges even though they have no authority? Tired of seeing our soldiers punished for doing their job? Convinced that Ahmadinejad is serious and Bush isn't? Doctor Polistra has the Solution..........



  ¶ 1:35 PM

  Graven images and modernity



This map is one of those 'Dot Your Spot' things, installed by a graphics marketplace site where I sometimes visit. It generates a dot automatically for each visitor, so it doesn't always know the location, and it's only been up for three days. Even so, it makes a pretty good map of Modernity. The US, Europe, and Australia / NZ are evenly represented; where there are people, there are graphic artists. (I'm a little sutprised by the high density in the rural Midwest, like Indiana and Ohio.) China, Japan and Korea are present in decent numbers, considering language barriers. Russia is missing, which isn't surprising considering its third-world status. But the most noticeable missing area is the entire Arab-influenced world. Plenty of people with plenty of money. But no graphics. One dot in Cairo, and one in Dubai, and that's it.
  ¶ 8:33 AM

  Oprah 2, Civilization 0
Of course it's not just the elite Jews; the elite Episcopalians, like Kindler Gentler George, are equally blind to reality.

A black-robed enemy saboteur named Anna Diggs Taylor, appointed by enemy agent Carter, has attacked on the court front.

And the Second Ford Administration responds like this:

Today a federal judge in Michigan has ruled that the Terrorist Surveillance Program ordered by the President to detect and prevent terrorist attacks against the American people is unconstitutional and otherwise illegal. We couldn’t disagree more with this ruling, and the Justice Department will seek an immediate stay of the opinion and appeal. Until the Court has the opportunity to rule on a stay of the Court's ruling in a hearing now set for September 7, 2006, the parties have agreed that enforcement of the ruling will be stayed.

Thus granting Enemy Agent Taylor an authority that she SIMPLY DOES NOT POSSESS.

If these elites had ever read the Constitution, they would know - and they could prove easily - that District Judges have exactly zero authority to make or revoke laws.

If we had a President who understood the Constitution and wanted to win this war, his response would be as follows:

We have arrested Anna Diggs Taylor for treason. She will be held incommunicado for the duration of this war, and will be tried or summarily executed after we have thoroughly defeated the enemy she is working for.

-----

Sidenote: Back in May, when writing my little 'dhimmitopia' piece, I predicted the future course of the war as follows:

In 2007, after determining that the West is sufficiently tenderized, China and Venezuela collaborate with Persia and the native Leninists to close the pincers. Persia takes out Israel and blocks all oil shipments in the Gulf; China closes down shipping in the Pacific, and Venezuela in the Caribbean. Sons of Allah create medium-scale destruction and havoc all over America and Europe.

Though I placed these events in 2007 for literary clarity, I was actually foreseeing a more immediate crunch, which turns out to have been right. Surprisingly, I seem to have underestimated the role of the native Leninists. They are not just fighting on the culture and court fronts, they are joining the suicide squads.
  ¶ 8:33 AM

  Oprah 1, Civilization 0.
One of the women who was shot and injured by Pakistani Naveed Haq in the Jewish Community Center a few weeks ago is speaking out.

She was astonishingly courageous during the event:

The first thing I had to do was protect my baby ... and put my arm in front of my abdomen," she said. “By some miracle the gunman shot me in the arm.”

Klein said she crumpled to the ground and the gunman moved on and started screaming that people not call police, but, she said, she did it anyway.

"He heard me on the telephone and said because you're too f-ing stupid to listen to me, you're the hostage," she said. "He put the gun to my head."

Police say Klein helped calm down Haq and he ended up surrendering to police.

But now she's being astonishingly stupid, reverting to liberal form:

Klein said she plans to use the incident to campaign for gun control and workplace safety.

Gun control? Workplace safety?? Workplace safety???????

If anyone in the Center had been armed and trained, Haq's mission would have failed. So the 'Haq attaq' is actually a fine argument against gun control.

But workplace safety? Where does that come from?

I suppose we're seeing the result of self-selection, similar to what happened in Germany in the '30s. The Jews who saw what Hitler was doing moved to America, while the established and Oprahfied elite remained in Germany and got gassed. Later, the realistic ones moved to Israel while the blind leftists remain in America.

Perhaps these hyper-civilized folks need to rethink a few matters, to put it gently.
  ¶ 7:57 AM

  Severed? Divided?
A couple of disturbing stories from this part of the world.

First, right here in my part of Spokane, some young Satanist types are 'severing' cats. When I heard the local news-reader talking about "severed cats", my first thought was that the phrase was just ungrammatical. You can sever a head or a leg, but you can't sever the entire critter. Nope, the phrase was accurate and unavoidable. Some (presumably) young dickheads are surgically cutting cats in half, then propping up the back half in the street. They are in fact severing cats. I was talking a few days ago about unthinkable vs thinkable .... now this truly strikes me as unthinkable.

Second, the spirit of Kristallnacht is alive and well in Tacoma:

Rebecca and Keith Yale had recently put up Israeli and American flags in their yard, when the conflict between Israel and Lebanon escalated.

Tacoma police said the lawn was burned in the shape of a cross, about 1 foot wide and 2 feet long.

The Yales have both the American and Israeli flags flying outside their home.
Just after 9 p.m. Monday, Rebecca Yale heard glass breaking and discovered the rock. Then she saw flames and at first thought the house was on fire.

"Then I ran outside and saw the cross and thought, 'wow,' I felt like I was transported back in time," she said.

Incidentally, Tacoma is where Fort Lewis is based; I've previously mentioned that Fort Lewis seems to be a breeding ground for enemy saboteurs within the Army.

Are we really a "divided" or "partisan" nation as the commentators like to say? I think not. I think we are a "severed" nation. The head is absent (or might as well be) and the horrible anti-Semitic rear end is in control of the media and the culture.
  ¶ 6:20 AM

  Optimistic Annie, part III




Seriously, why does the FBI continue to insult our intelligence? In this case the correct information peeked out for a moment before the Curtain of Rectification was drawn, so the Memory Hole approach didn't work.
  ¶ 10:50 AM

  Unthinkable?
One of Fox News's morning infobabes, discussing the Bojinka II arrests, mentioned that the female bomber intended to use her baby as a bomb. The infobabe called this "unthinkable."

Wrong.

If you're serious about winning a war, no tactic is unthinkable.

The only unthinkable event is losing.

Our enemy has this mindset, but we don't.

And our problem is not just that we find too many things unthinkable; worst of all, we haven't made victory THINKABLE. The enemy has an explicit vision of the world after Allah's victory. Sharia everywhere. But we don't have a vision of what the world should look like after we win.

Strangely enough, Ahmadinejad's propagandistic and parodic statement of our goal is a pretty good template for what our goal SHOULD BE:

Bush's team and the parties that support him want to monopolize energy resources in the world," Ahmadinejad said. "Because once they have that, they can impose their opinions, points of view, policies on other nations and, of course, line their pockets.

Yes, that's exactly what we SHOULD be envisioning. A world without Allah. A world where Western Civilization holds power everywhere, a world where petroleum lines OUR pockets, not China's or Iran's pockets.

Unfortunately, Misterbush's Neighborhood works precisely the other way. Bush seems to envision a world where Arabs are given the chance to vote in free and fair elections, supervised by Jimmy Carter. And we've already seen the absolute and inevitable result of such elections. Sharia everywhere. The enemy's goal.
  ¶ 8:34 AM

  More thoughts on ceasefire....
Here's my real thought, which I couldn't quite organize last night.

The resolution is absolutely bad, of course. It makes Lebanon happy, so it can't be good. But I suspect Israel needs the time-out to resupply, reorganize its government, and reconnoiter the situation. In Sharon's last years, it appears that he went soft and allowed both the military and the intelligence services to deteriorate. The extent of the problem wasn't clear until Israel tried to fight a war. Olmert took office 'accidentally' when Sharon more or less died; he wasn't elected on the basis of his warrior qualities. So Israel is in an unusually weak position, which invited the attack.

Thus, even thought the halt gives the enemy a propaganda victory and time to resupply, it also gives Israel time to reorganize and resupply, and perhaps to appoint a better PM. Which may be why Israel has reluctantly agreed to it.

And when it fails - which it will, of course - Israel will resume fighting with a somewhat better chance of victory.

In the end, I guess, it comes down to this: I don't trust our government to do the right thing, but I do trust Israel to do the right thing. If Israel's gov't is agreeing to this, it must see some benefit, whether we can see it or not.
  ¶ 9:05 AM

  Is this the Sudetenland Moment?
To be sure, Israel accepting the ceasefire indeed gives an immediate boost to the enemy. If I'm going to be internally consistent, I should be crowing I-told-you-so at this point, because I learned the mindset of warrior cultures a long time ago, and I've been pushing this idea for a long time. Repeating since 1991 that we won't defeat Saddam until we kill Saddam, we won't defeat the Army of Allah until we kill it.

Despite all that, I feel that this 'cessation of hostilities' will be more positive than negative in the long run. This month of war in Israel and Lebanon has been a learning experience for many. Those of us who already understand the basic nature of this war have acquired an apocalyptic sense that the crunch is near; and many who were not fully awake have finally been awakened to the role of Iran as puppetmaster. On both sides, the alignments are no longer hidden.

We don't have a Churchill at the helm of a major power, but Israel's UN ambassador Dan Gillerman has given us a truly Churchillian speech for this moment in history.

A few excerpts:

Where there's a will there's a way ... but the will to implement this way has been lacking. Over the past month the peoples of Israel and Lebanon have paid a heavy price. In the face of failure to implement these resolutions, Israel has had to do what Lebanon has failed to. As a result, Hezbollah's lethal capabilities have been dealt a lethal blow. Bases have been dismantled and stockpiles of Iranian missiles have been destroyed. Southern Lebanon has been substantially cleared of the infrastructure of terrorism, and the terrorists and their sponsors have learned that the campaign of brutal terror will meet with the forceful response that it deserves.

....

However, Israel is ready to give the government of Lebanon and the International Community another chance to create a new reality on the ground. [If resolutions are not implemented] we will be back at this table in a month or a year, for then the terrorists, supplied no doubt with even more lethal weapons from Iran, will be further emboldened by the demonstration of our lack of resolve.

....

We need to open a new chapter, in which moderation is not seen as weakness, and in which a hand extended in peace is not seen as surrender.

.....

Iran has been sent a clear message. It cannot develop weapons, and it cannot fight proxy wars on the territory of others.

President Ahmadinejad has stated his dogma clearly. "There is nothing more beautiful, more holy or more eternal than the death of a martyr".

Today more than ever, a united and determined response is required from those who believe that "There is nothing more beautiful, more holy, or more eternal than a child able to grow up, living in security and peace."

The choice that faces the people of Lebanon is clear. It is the choice between those who develop agriculture and make deserts bloom, versus those who turn towns into bases of terror and barren land. It is the choice between those who work to advance medicine and bring health to body and limb, versus those who manufacture only weapons of destruction to tear limb from body. It is the choice between those who export innovation and technology, versus those whose only export is terror.
  ¶ 11:11 PM

  Bravo delete?
Given that Israel has just accepted the UN resolution, I wonder if my cheering for Olmert was premature. Appears to be considerable difference of opinion among the various watchers and commentators. Some say there wasn't any real choice, some say it's a pure (and avoidable) defeat.

I'm still inclined to trust Israel's long-term collective judgment, since they have a parliamentary system that can replace inadequate Prime Ministers almost immediately, and it does appear that the replacement is coming.....
  ¶ 3:56 PM

  Random notes
1. In the wake of Bojinka II, the TV commentators are agonizing yet again about 'home-grown' terrorists. I've agonized about why this question is so mysterious to the commentators, and just now figured it out. People who end up on TV and in politics nowadays are either attractive or privileged or both. So when they think along the lines of "giving back to society", they are talking about positive things. For people who grow up on the bottom of the social totem pole, "giving back" has a darker meaning. The consequence of such a mindset depends mainly on your peer group. If everyone around you is thinking and talking of dark and paranoid matters [eg Goths or Mohammedans], you get a suicide bomber [Columbine style or Allah style]. If everyone around you is thinking and talking about a positive and productive life, you submerge your dark thoughts and find ways to live more or less positively and productively. It still won't be as positive as the life of an attractive and popular kid, but you'll grow out of the dark stuff.

I emphasized nowadays because the cultural power of TV, and the idiotic rules of McCain-Feingold style reform laws, have 'purified' our elites. In earlier times, we had a wider variety of personalities because our entrance requirements were based partly on competence, not strictly on appearance and riches.

We need some Nixon types at the top, dark people who can understand the thinking of terrorists and figure out how to change their 'hearts and minds' in appropriately negative ways.

2. Bravo to Olmert! He was a bit slow off the mark, but he's in overdrive now, pushing hard toward absolute victory.

3. Speaking of dark, we really need to ask the following question: Whose final solution do we want? We know that Ahmadinejad's final solution is a world without Christians and Jews. We do NOT know that any significant part of the Nation of Allah disagrees with Ahmadinejad. The result of this syllogism is unpleasant, but we need to start pondering it very quickly.

4. Why are we so sensitive about religious profiling? We don't have any trouble at all with criminalizing religious beliefs. Look at polygamy. Back in the 1840's we actually made war against Brigham Young to defeat his polygamous Utah. Right now, this very minute, our FBI has Warren Jeffs at the top of its Public Enemy list. Jeffs hasn't killed or even hurt anyone; his sole crime is arranging multiple marriages. So don't try to tell me that we refuse to criminalize religion! It's only the dangerous religion, the one that wants to kill us all, that we can't seem to criminalize. THIS IS INSANE AND SUICIDAL.
  ¶ 9:05 AM

  "Women and minorities hardest hit."
A classic example of the standard MSM operating mode, just like the old joke.

Headline: "Sick, Poor Suffer Most in Israeli Shelters."

One sentence: "Soon they will have to send us to the madhouse because we are all losing our minds," said Rachel Ben-Sheetrit, who lives off welfare and can't afford to leave her home for a hotel out of rocket range.

You can write the rest.

What's the real story, the interesting story here?

The fact that Israel PROVIDES shelter for everyone, especially the poor and handicapped who can't travel to safety on their own.

In other words, the proper headline would be "Sick, Poor Helped Most by Israeli Shelters."

We had a real Civil Defense system in the '50s and '60s, but we allowed it to collapse.

The closest we've come to providing shelter in the modern era was when Tom Ridge advised us to buy ductape. "Homeland Security" is a cruel hoax.  ¶ 9:27 AM

  Thoroughly Modern Joe
The commentators are saying that Lamont symbolizes the new 21st Century way of doing politics, while Lieberman runs the old way.

The truth is opposite, and here's how:

From 1920 to 1990, America followed the Soviet path in many ways. We concentrated on heavy industry, heavy churches, heavy unions. You were expected to stick with your wife, your church, your union, your company, for life. If these grand and glorious institutions displeased you, too bad.

Specifically in politics, a candidate was supposed to pick a party for life. If he lost the primary or the caucus, that was the end; he was out of politics for this term at least. He could try again through the same party next time around, but that was the only choice.

Since 1970, but more strongly since 1990, these loyalties have gone away. The modern tendency is entrepreneurial. Wife goes crazy? Better off without her. Local schools are hopelessly commie? You can find a private school. Church denomination goes gay? Find a splinter denomination or invent your own. Corporation goes belly-up? Start your own company or free-lance. (Of course all of these steps were possible before, but they were literally unthinkable for most people, and accompanied by social stigma.)

Joe has taken the new path, with a thoroughly modern casualness. He tried running through the party; when it didn't work, he instantly switched to running outside the party. Just like trying Coors, finding it distasteful and switching to Budweiser.

So Ned is the one who has stuck with the old Soviet-style 'big unit', while Joe is the entrepreneur.
  ¶ 6:31 AM

  Don't just Pray for Israel; Pay for Israel!


I believe firmly in the old WW2 idea that civilians should sacrifice to help the war effort. Just after 9/11, I bought a big chunk of series-I bonds toward that end, even though the Bush admin was actively discouraging war bond purchase. (That should have told me something was peculiar about this bunch, but I was slow to realize....)

Lately, though, I've lost all faith in the ability of our government to do anything useful. I really don't want to put more money into US Bonds, because George Junior will just use the money to build schools in Arab countries, to rebuild Lebanon (in other words, rebuild Hezbollah) and generally to spread Sharia (which he calls Democracy) across the world.

So I sez to myself, Self, who's fighting for civilization? And Self sez: Israel.

Israel has an online bond campaign going on, which looks much more like the old familiar WW2 bond sales. The process is quite easy, though not quite obvious from the website. You need to go here and find your nearest agency, then email the agency. They will send you a PDF form that you can print out; then you send the printed form with your check to the address on the form.

Feels good to know that my money is going to someone who will use it properly!
  ¶ 2:55 PM

  Misterbush's Neighborhood
Listening to press conf with Bush and Rice this morning. Bush is doing a good job of explaining his position, but the logic just doesn't work. He says the terrorists are rebelling against "young democracy", and that the cure is to strengthen "young democracy".

Pure Wilson, and a nice-sounding idea. Unfortunately it just ain't true. The current Jihad began in 1968, and expanded during several different styles of American foreign policy.

It's not democracy they dislike, whether young or old.

It's Christians and Jews.

We can't solve that basic divide by imposing policies of any sort. We can only solve it by killing all the leaders of Jihad, and killing enough of the Ummah to convince those warrior cultures that our mojo is supreme.
  ¶ 8:37 AM

  Bing does Loose Lips
Unlike the other "Keep your mouth shut" number I've used here, Bing Crosby's version is a great piece of swing with a bit of bluesy flavor.

From 12/30/43, Bing Crosby and Cass Daley.

Incidentally, I'm busy preparing some digital house models for sale, and generally under the weather, so I'm rather short of cartoon ideas at the moment. Not that it matters.
  ¶ 10:01 PM

  Arrrrrrrgggggghhhh!


Listening to Neal Cavuto's short interview with Kindler Gentler George. Cavuto asked why people are so anxious when everything (and by "everything" Cavuto means, of course, the betting at the Wall Street Casino) is going so well. George Junior answered: "When people see innocent civilians being killed, they get anxious."

Revealing. His mind starts from the basic leftist moral-equivalence pattern. He doesn't realize - and probably couldn't comprehend if he heard - that most Americans are anxious because we see the enemy growing stronger while we do nothing. The people who are worried about civilian deaths are not 'anxious', they are disloyal, and a President is not supposed to worry about the emotional state of traitors.

KGG also repeated his idiotic definition "This is a war between terror and democracy." Hmm. Let's look at the current hot-spot. When did Hezbollah start firing missiles? AFTER it became a FREELY ELECTED PART of the FREELY ELECTED DEMOCRATIC government of Lebanon.
  ¶ 8:02 AM

  Bad apples?
I'm goddamned tired of this stupid metaphor. Every commentator, when discussing the Army of Allah, is required to stipulate over and over and over and over that we are, of course, only talking about the Tiny Fraction Of Bad Apples, and that 99.9999999999999999% of Mohammedans are, of course, Good Hard-Working Decent Pro-Western People.

First, it's obviously false. If such a huge majority actually disliked the actions of a few misfit criminals, those misfits wouldn't be sent out to act as the knights or champions representing the people. They'd be in jail or dead.

I haven't yet seen any suicide bombers acting to stop the Army of Allah, nor any Mohammedan fighting force standing up against them.

But aside from that, it's an unbalanced and historically absurd description.

So here's the even-handed, fair & balanced, culturally sensitive way to describe the situation: On every side of every war, a small fraction of men - maximum 20% - have the guts and experience to do the actual fighting, while the majority of the nation or tribe participates indirectly, supporting the fighters in various ways. This is true of our country, and it is also true of the Nation of Mohammed (the Ummah.)

In short, we're not talking about bad apples, we're talking about the traditional functions and proportions of Army and Civilians, similar on both sides.

By this standard, who has the more efficient army? Who's getting more bang for the buck? Unquestionably Allah. Nineteen men, with logistical support from a few hundred, brought the United States to its knees. We've fallen and we can't get up. Our million soldiers, supported by 300 million civilians with trillions of dollars, haven't gained any ground because we're NOT FIGHTING in any meaningful way.

Time to bring out the A-team. A stands for Atom. If we don't vaporize Tehran and Damascus in the next few days, there really won't be any point in ..... well, anything.
  ¶ 10:26 PM

  Missing words
Listening to the press conf by the Phoenix police on catching the two serial killers. I haven't heard even one utterance of the word "alleged" or any of its weasely cousins. The chief stated "We've caught these two monsters". Not the usual shit: "We've allegedly caught two alleged individuals who must, of course, be presumed innocent as the Constitution requires." (Of course it doesn't; that concept is nowhere in the Constitution.)

Refreshing.

Nearly all police announcements are aimed more at pleasing the Anti-Civilization Lawyers Union than informing the citizens. These Phoenix folks are focusing on telling the citizens what they need to know.
  ¶ 10:20 AM

  The last three weeks of civilization?
A harsh but true article by Barbara Lerner in this morning's National Review.

Diplomacy before a war can sometimes provide an honorable alternative. “Diplomacy” in the midst of a war we are losing by failing to confront our main enemy is a euphemism for appeasement — a dead end road. The more eager our president is to rely on “the international community,” the U.N., and our EU “partners,” and to avoid, at all costs, any military confrontation with Iran, the more confident of ultimate victory the mullahs become. To them, and to hundreds of millions of Muslims around the world, watching Al Jazeera or its like on their TV screens, it looks like Iran is winning one glorious Islamist victory after another, striking blow after paralyzing blow at the once-mighty giant of the Christian West, while we cower in fear, afraid to strike back. We look like losers, while Iran looks invincible, and that image of invincibility is the most effective weapon Iran has in its hugely successful battle for the allegiance of the Muslim masses everywhere. Most Americans are still unaware of Iran’s promise to light up the skies with a great surprise on August 22, but Muslims everywhere are keenly aware of it; most await the day with growing excitement.

We should not wait, passively, for the Iranians to unveil their surprise. We should light up the skies with our own surprise: a massive aerial bombardment that wipes out most of Iran’s nuclear facilities, and decimates the ranks of its mullahs as well as those of the Revolutionary Guard and Basij forces that keep them in power, defeating these monsters and decimating their fan base by shattering their image of invincibility. Retired air force Lt. General Tom McInerney already has a plan to wipe out most of Iran’s nuclear facilities from the air. As I’ve argued, we should augment it with additional targets and let fly, as soon as possible, with no forewarning, for maximum effect.

Lots of us have been arguing for such action, which should have started on 9/12.

Our goal should be to abolish Allah.

Instead, the Second Chamberlain Administration is explicitly placing Mohammedan regimes in power.

I can no longer merely ask which side they're on. It's objectively clear.


  ¶ 7:46 AM

  What would the real Annie think of Osama's Pope?
Since I've become fascinated with Harold Gray, I picked up a big compilation of his original Annie strips from '35 to '45. Great reading! Lots of suspense and action, and absolutely zero moral equivalence. Gray understood and appreciated diversity in the true sense of the word. He portrayed a wide variety of people with differing temperaments and experiences, and allowed for those differences with one basic proviso: You must be constructive. You're probably not a leader; you may not be able to succeed in the world's terms; but if you are building things and minding your own business, you're doing right. If you are destroying things or people, or (especially!) if you are minding other people's business, you're doing wrong. Gray had a special hate for uplifters, reformers, and do-gooders; he would have seen through John McCain in a millisecond.

Here's what he thought of Christian pacifism. We can surmise that it must have been rearing its ugly head in those days just as it does now....





Incidentally, when I read this I thought -- Wait a minute, isn't this backwards? I had to look up the original! Sure enough, the commonly quoted version of this passage is intentionally perverted and inverted. The Leftist parody (beat your swords into plowshares) has become so rigidly established in common currency that the original sounds wrong!

-----

This reminded me of another bellicose saying that has been replaced by its leftist parody. Admiral Perry's quote "We have met the enemy and he is ours" served for many years as a succinct definition of how and when to stop fighting. Not when the UN passes a resolution, not when you start to kill civilians, not when the New York Times disapproves, but when you own the enemy. Around 1970, Walt Kelly (who was the exact leftist competitor to Harold Gray, in fact) put the leftist parody into the mouth of Pogo: "We have met the enemy and he is us." This version has taken over entirely in the common vocabulary, so that the bellicose original now looks like a misprint. Pogo's version, of course, recommends not only surrender but self-destruction. No wonder it has gained such wide appeal.



  ¶ 10:30 AM

  What changed?



Hmm. Could it be that more people are suffering from heat-related problems now, compared to the last warm period of the '30s, because the people are different? Because a typical 2006 American encloses the volume and mass of two typical 1936 Americans?

Incidentally, the pic on the right is from a wonderful online archive of 1910-1940 American people and buildings, the Toledo Public Library archive. What makes it especially wonderful is the way it uses subject links, sort of like Flickr's tags. If you can't find what you want with a word search, you can tag around until you find it.

-----

Update: Rush just read a news story that answered the question. Yes, fat is the difference.

-----

I'm more puzzled about the question of power grids, and unsatisfied by the answers being given publicly. Here in Spokane, we had a two-week stretch of 90's with a couple of 100's. The local power company (for the first time) bumped its grid-load limit and requested voluntary conservation, which did the trick.

What puzzles me is that a two-week stretch of 90's with a couple days of 100 is NOT UNUSUAL. Spokane gets the same pattern every summer. The only discernable difference is that we had two consecutive days of 100 this July, while the 100's are usually more scattered.

And it's NOT a matter of more air conditioners, at least here. When I first moved to Spokane, I was amazed by the near-absence of AC. In Kansas and Oklahoma, something like 98% of homes have AC, while here it's more like 10%. Since then, I've been informally counting the coolers when I walk to the store in hot weather. This year is NOT different from any previous year; still about 10%.

I suspect there's some internal change in the way power companies function, or even some kind of sabotage going on. Heat happens in most parts of the country every year, but this is the first time we've seen such widespread grid overloads and even grid burnouts.
  ¶ 8:30 AM

  Who counts?


Here's the headline on AOL's news banner this morning.

By the standards of our dear 'reporters' and 'journalists', the people in Lebanon count; those pesky Jews don't.

Mel Gibson had to get drunk to reveal what was in his heart; 'reporters' are allowed to express the same feeling openly. Good old Doublethink. The very same statement with the very same intentions is good or bad depending on the Authenticity of the speaker.
  ¶ 7:55 AM