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Harry Reid: Osama Buys Farm In Pakistan
Harry Reid talking about Osama being dead.
From Pajamas Media
Message from varifrank to Senator Reid: STFU. You can talk about Osama being dead when you bring his head on a pike into the senate chambers. Until then, just STFU...
UPDATE: Ok, its audio-visual day here at varifrank, so heres a few other posters that should go up on Capital Hill.
Posted @ November 30, 2005 06:38 AM | Current Affairs | Comments (0)
one year and five months
(Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin: "I Surrender". )
And yet another virulent Anti-American, Anti-Bush, Anti-Capitalist Government takes a tumble. I blame Bush for this...
The Lesson is clear, stand against America, stand against Bush - you dont last very long. Stand with Bush, Stand with America, you will probably get re-elected. For all their caterwauling and fundrasiing, the leftists like moveon.org and Michael Moore have done more to get centrist, business savvy governments elected world-wide than any force since Ronald Reagan.
Unless your from Spain, this has held to be true over the past 5 years. Just ask Herr Schroeder, former leader of the French/German European Central Powers and now deposed leftist hack.
Posted @ November 28, 2005 05:23 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (4)
From the Law Offices of Dewey, Cheatam and Howe
Well, well, look what we got here. Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark has joined the legal team of Saddam Hussein. For some reason, the left thinks the title of "ex-attorney general" lends some sort of panache to having this man on Saddams side, but I think seeing Ramsey Clark on your legal team is like looking up and seeing a vulture circling overhead. It just does not bode well for your future, its like O.J. saying you were framed.
Let's take a look at the track record of this particularly fine legal mind.
- Represented Lyndon Larouche. Result? Lost the case, his client served time in prison and now serves as a footnote to whackjob history.
- Represented PLO leaders in a suit brought by the family of Leon Klinghoffer. The case was settled out of court and the results fundced the The Klinghoffer foundation (Klinghoffer v. PLO, 739 F. Supp. 854 (S.D.N.Y. 1990) and Klinghoffer v. PLO, 937 F.2d 44, 50 (2d Cir. 1991) ). This lawsuit spurred passage of the Antiterrorism Act of 1990 which made it easier for victims of terrorism to sue terrorists and collect civil damages for losses incurred.
- Represented Karl Linnas, an ex-Nazi concentration camp guard in Estonia. Lost the case, served time in a soviet prison and died there. At the time, Clark said " hunting Nazi war criminals was wrong on principle. He also said "I oppose the idea of regenerating hatreds and pursuits 40 years after the fact."
- Represented Elizaphan Ntakirutimana, a leader of the Rwandan genocide. The Tribunal found it proven beyond reasonable doubt that Ntakirutimana had transported armed attackers to the Mugonero complex, where they killed hundreds of Tutsi refugees. Ntakirutimana was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment.
- Represented Slobodan Milosevic against charges of War Crimes and genocide. The case is still pending.During this time he supported Serbian marches in New york City, where he was known to bellow out " "We've got to stop the fanning of flames of war by the U.S." and "We've got to abolish NATO."
- Represented Mahmoud El-Abed Ahmad against extradition to Israel, where he is wanted for murdering passengers in a bus.
- Represented Sheikh Rahman, head of Gama'a al-Islamyya. These are the terrorists who sliced noses and ears off some of the 58 foreign tourists and four Egyptian workers whom they slaughtered at Luxor in Egypt in 1997.
- Represented Jack/Jakob Riemer, former Nazi SS guard, accused of playing a supporting role during the liquidation of the Warsaw and Czestochowa ghettoes in World War II Poland.
- Represented Deposed President of Liberia, Charles Taylor. In June 2003, a United Nations justice tribunal issued a warrant for Taylor's arrest, charging him with war crimes. The UN asserts that Taylor created and backed rebels in Sierra Leone, which is accused of a range of atrocities, including the use of child soldiers. The civil war that he led in Liberia turned into an ethnic conflict, with seven factions fighting for control of Liberia's resources. Up to 200,000 people were killed and more than 1 million were forced from their homes. His administration also had harbored members of Al-Qaeda sought in connection with the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
When asked how he could defend such people, he responded "Lawyers defend people, That's what they're supposed to do." Yes, thats true sir, but on occasion, they win a case now and then just to make it look like all that money your parents spent sending you to law school amounted to something. Its one thing to have "the devils resume", but your track record of wins,losses and ties is pretty awful. How do you justify your hourly rate? Might there be a case for malpractice laying about they weeds? Kunstler and Kuby have defended some pretty disgusting people, but they also tend to win now and then.( Kuby does anyway, Kunstlers record has gone all to hell now that hes dead...)
Clark also cant miss any opportunity to be his own Secretary of State for the "Republic of Whackdonia".
For example:
- At the height of the Vietnam War ( 1972!), he flew to Hanoi and denounced the U.S. war effort.
(ed: no better evidence of our "national restraint" can be found outside of the the fact that wasnt summarily executed upon his return.)
- In 1980, after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini overthrew the Shah of Iran, Clark flew to Tehran at the behest of President Carter to try to win the release of 53 American hostages. He flew home without the hostages, but then he returned to Iran and participated in a tribunal that convicted the United States of colluding in the Shah's crimes. That made Carter so mad he threatened to prosecute Clark for violating a ban on travel to Iran. Clark is reported by multiple sources to have taken part in a private meeting with the Ayatollah for 40 minutes.
Look at that, he made Carter "mad". How many times has that happened?
- In 1986, after the United States bombed Libya in response to a terrorist bombing of a Berlin disco, Clark flew to Tripoli, met with dictator Moammar Gaddafi and denounced the air raid. Later, he sued the U.S. government on behalf of Libyans killed and injured in the bombing, but the suit was thrown out of court.
Again I have to ask, what is it that people are paying for when you bill them for your services, Mr. Clark?
- In 1990, after the United States invaded Panama to arrest dictator Manuel Noriega for dope dealing, Clark flew to Panama, denounced the invasion and claimed Americans killed between 2,000 and 4,000 people. When a reporter asked him for evidence, Clark snapped, "You are an investigative journalist. You find the sources." A study by the independent Panamanian Committee for Human Rights later put the death toll at 565.
- Clark was in Basrah during the First Gulf War which has given his hours of time to spread lies and half truths about the First and Second Gulf Wars. He has b een reported as saying "We bombed them for 42 days in 1991, I was there for 14 of them. I drove 2,000 miles just seeing civilian damage. We were hitting every civilian thing you can think of -- taxicabs, school buses, mosques, synagogues, hospitals. I didn't see a hospital that had windows in it -- all of them were smashed! We dropped 88,500 tons of bombs! That's a Pentagon figure. That's 7 1/2 Hiroshimas! A hundred fifty thousand Iraqis died! We lost 155. That's a slaughter! That's a slaughter! You can't slaughter people like that!"
Ladies and Gentleman, You just cant buy that kind of hyperbole.
And just in case you think that the silliness is limited just to his views on Iraq, heres what he said about "The war that dare not speak its name" - Afghanistan.
"It was foolish from every standpoint. We shot the place up. It's totally out of control. We're going to have to find a way out somehow".
Multiple Elections. Written Constitution. Emanicipation of women. 2 million Refugees repatirated. Yeah... Totally out of control.
It should be noted that Ramsey Clark is supported by marxist/leninists such as A.N.S.W.E.R and World Workers Party (WWP). And who is the WWP? on May 10 2002, FBI Director Louis Freeh said the WWP is part of a group of "Anarchists and extremist socialist groups many of which, have an international presence and, at times, also represent a potential threat in the United States." And International A.N.S.W.E.R? Its a front group for the WWP, who by the way also support Cindy Sheehan.
Not that anyone at CNN cares, since they made Ex-Attorney General Ramsey Clark their "poster boy" today. He's against Bush, how bad can he be?
Posted @ November 27, 2005 09:11 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (0)
Revival tent
Photographers focus on Cindy Sheehan in empty tent waiting to sign copies of her new book (Associated Press)
Well, I for one blame Bush, Cheney and Ashcroft for this horrible public relations debacle. But I suppose it also had something to do with the big banner outside the tent that said "help me make a buck by milking the death of my son for all its worth". That sort of thing, along with the lack of fair trade coffee for the press will put any leftist paphletteer into the remainder bin faster than you can say " Ann Coulter is a babe".
I like this shot better:
Cindy Sheehan waiting to sign copies of her new book yesterday in Crawford, Texas (Reuters)
You know when to cruel bitch mistress of fame leaves you, its worse than heroin withdrawl.
I knew it was over for her when I heard her say " We have to turn this from an "anti-war" movement to a "peace" movement. Thats it exactly, the war is over and now its time to find another target,so instead of fighting against a war that freed 35 million people from a tyrant and dictator, let's move the goal post to "peace".
Good luck to you Cindy. If your "peace" movement ever shows up in Zimbabwe, Damascus, Tehran or Pyongyang protesting the horrors and general unpeacefulness of those places, I'll personally send you a 1000 dollars, but so long as "peace" equates directly anti-america and isolationism, you'll understand if I take a pass, right?
Posted @ November 27, 2005 05:44 PM | Sheehan Chronicles | Comments (0)
Radek Sikorski: A personally shattering experience
From the UK Telegraph:
"Polish defence minister, Radek Sikorsky showed this map at an emotional press conference. In a historic break with the past, Poland's newly elected government threw open its top secret Warsaw Pact military archives - including a 1979 map revealing the Soviet bloc's vision of a seven-day atomic holocaust between Nato and Warsaw Pact forces.
The map dates from a time when the balance of power was radically different from now. In Washington the vacillating Jimmy Carter was suffering a series of defeats - the Iranian revolution and the subsequent seizure of the United States embassy in Teheran. Britain was at a low ebb, racked by strikes, and just putting its faith in Margaret Thatcher.
The Kremlin, however, was stretching its muscles - preparing for its ill-fated takeover of Afghanistan.
The decision to unveil the Warsaw Pact documents is one of the first moves of Poland's new conservative government. Mr Sikorsky described it as an attempt to draw a line under the country's Communist past, and "educate" the Polish public about the old regime.
He did not deny that the opening of the archives will be seen as a provocation in Moscow. Russian-Polish relations have sharply deteriorated recently, amid rows over a planned oil pipeline, and Polish support for democratic revolutions in Russia's backyard, first in Ukraine, and now Belarus.
Mr Sikorsky, a former dissident who studied at Oxford University, said: "These are documents that are crucial for educating the public, and showing how Poland was kept as an unwilling ally of the Soviet Union. This government wants to end the post-Communist period.
"It's important for citizens to know who was a hero, and who was a villain. It is important for the civic health of society to make these things public."
I'll be spending some time this weekend with several posts in the area of "what might have been", but this piece is an example of two things. First, how rapidly history has been re-written by the left and second, the impact that the re-writing is having on our current world view.
Posted @ November 26, 2005 12:02 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (1)
Black Friday
Took the family for a trip into San Francisco today. We took Amtrak into the city and found it to be everything a subsidized 19th century technology should be, inadequate, expensive, slow and late.
If Union Square is any indication, this is a fine Christmas season for the economy.
Back later...
Posted @ November 25, 2005 10:14 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (2)
Thanksgiving blogging II
Ill just let Norman Rockwell illustrate it for me...
yeah, even if you are agnostic or an atheist, you often overlook how important that little idea is to your life, don't you? Ask the Catholics and Protestants in Ireland, ask the Druze and Muslims in Lebanon, ask the Sihk and Hindu of India whether or not this is a fine idea. The idea itself is a gift from God, but the practice and care in which we live it goes unnoticed for the miracle that it is.
look deeply at this painting and think of the emotional impact that this painting has on you and the images of your own life that it brings forth. Then try to imagine the impact that it had on the audience of people of the Great Depression and the World War and imagine the hope and promise that this same image mustve held for people of that generation.
We take for granted the bounty in which we live.
Notice the look of joy on each of the faces, look at the man in the lower corner as he beckons you, the viewer, to join in the proceedings. Its not the turkey that is being celebrated here, it is the family, the gathering itself and the miracle of life that has provided the conditions that have allowed it to occur.
This painting captures a scene of peace and beauty while showing the reality of life that is just over the horizon. Look at the headlines on the newspaper. The world goes on in its horror, but this man and woman are at peace by the simple act of putting their children to bed. The children are unaware of the horrors of the news and all they care about is that mom and dad are there to see them off to sleep.
This man stands and speaks his mind in public. By this simple act, he announces for all that he is a free man. He stands for all of us. Even today in the modern age, we face daily assault on our ability to speak freely in a public arena. We live in an age where the abilty to speek freely is being felt in parts of the world where just a few years ago, such a thing was unthinkable. To the people of the Plymouth colony, this was the miracle that they were willing to throw away everything they had to achieve. To the people of 1776, this was the idea that caused them to be willing to rebel against their King and Country. To the people of 1860, the idea that black men were not to be afforded this basic right was enough to cause the Union itself to dissolve. Today, people all over the world are struggling with this idea; an idea that people in our country have struggled with for over 400 years. It is a struggle that each of us bares each and every day, but the same face is there out in front of each us, the face of one man standing in public and speaking his mind without fear of retribution. This - is what Democracy looks like. We take for granted the miracle of this simple act and the power it holds for each of us.
Happy Thanksgiving. Enjoy this day for the miracle that it truly is and be sure to give thanks to one and all for helping make this miracle come into being.
Posted @ November 24, 2005 12:11 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (0)
Thanksgiving Blogging
An annual tradition for us here in the Sacramento area is to visit the American River Fish Hatchery during this spawning-shopping-feasting-eating-hottubbing season.
The American River is a magificent example of integrating nature into an urban setting. The American River parkway runs directly through suburban Sacramento from downtown eastward to the outer Folsom Lake area, some 22 miles later. it is bike trails, riparian river environment, oak forests, small river rapids, all within walking distance from your home. The best part is that outside of Sacramento, almost no one knows about it.
This is a terrific year for the salmon season and although I dont know the statistics, as a guy who grew up as a kid on the river and has watched or fished each of the salmon runs since about 1972, I can say that this year looked spectacular, at least at the hatchery end of it anyway...
For those that have never been, heres how it works. The American River is blocked by Nimbus Dam which creates Lake Natomas which is blocked at the other end by Folsom Dam, of the town, lake and prison and popular Johnny Cash song of the same name. Nimbus Dam blocked the route of the salmon run, so the State of California placed a fish hatchery at that location to harvest the salmon and steelhead trout that make their annual runs up the river to return to their place of birth.
The fish do their natural thing by swimming up river from the ocean and as they do they encounter the fish ladder at Nimbus Dam where they enter the system to be harvested for the eggs and milt. The eggs are then placed in large tanks where they grow into more salmon who are then released back into the river and into other creeks in the area.
This is the entrance to the fish ladder. The fish in this shot are about 20 to 30 lbs, and roughly 3 feet in length. This gate is dropped to slow the progression of the fish up the ladder so that fish processors can keep up with the workload. As soon as the fish have been processed, the gate is opened and more fish are allowed up the ladder to be processed. These fish are extrmemly energetic and sometimes jump several feet into the air, which scares the bejeebus out of the kids but its still fun to watch.
The Nimbus Fish Hatchery sits on a small bluff over the river. The State Fish and Game organization has recently added a "nature walk" to take you along the side of the river along a handicapped enabled trail, where you can see the thousands and thousands of these fish as they come up the river to wait at the fish ladder to meet their destiny.
This is a shot taken from the nature walk looking down at the river to one of the migrating salmon who is just a foot or so off the shoreline. This fish is about 3 feet long, but is just one fish that is part of a group of thousands and thousands of other fish. While I did take several pictures of the fish in mass numbers, none of them show the true spectacle, it seems the eye is better at picking out these fish just below the surface than the camera was.
This is the "two little varifranks" at the salmon exhibit within the hatchery itself. The exhibit takes people through the lifecycle of the salmon and shows the various salmon species which come up the river each year. At the end of the display there is a place where you can watch the salmon as they are, ahem, uh, well, "processed", by the Fish and Game workers.
Mrs. Varifrank and the lovely little Miss Varifrank.
The author, yours truly and his son, who has just been informed that the next stop of the day is to supercuts.
So what have I got to be thankful for?
I think I've just answered that question.
Posted @ November 23, 2005 02:36 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (4)
No Bias here
Of course, this would have never happened under the close tutelage of the master television journalist Aaron Brown.
Luckily it only happened on CNN, or someone might have seen it.
( I'm thinking Drudge probably got better ratings reporting it, than CNN got doing it....)
Posted @ November 22, 2005 12:39 PM | Comments (0)
Pajamas Leaders Pull Out Of OSM
Apparently, were back to using the previous name of "Pajamas Media" rather than the new "Open Source Media". Look, even I laughed at the "Open Sores Media" Tag. Funny is funny, even if its directed at you...
Note to "The Chief": Ignore the suits and stick with your instincts. The know-it-alls who are attracted by the musk-like scent of VC cash arent worth your money or your time. If the VC's knew what they were dong they wouldnt be coming to you to fund you they would already own the idea outright, so start with that idea when you talk to VC and their parasitical lifeform the " business consultant", they dont know what they are doing. As a survivor of not one but three crashes in the Silicon Valley I can tell you this: Money does not equate to brains! It's one or the other and on rare, very rare occasions its both. I think there is something to be said for Open Source Media, but 20 minutes of google time might have shown that it was already being used, and thus, not really a candidate in the first place. Use your tools, use your instincts. Your people are your best resource, not the suits who came with the VC cash.
"Pajamas" works, "Pajamas" is a brand already, Pajamas is what this is all about in the first place, so rather than run from it, make the rest of the world think that it was their idea in the first place.
To me it was never about the name, but the content. Names come with reputation, so work on building a reputation first, the name will come when the market decides they have to call you something. I'd spend a little more time on the content of the site and less on the damn name.
Roger - Just make Pajamas the "go to" place for info and forget all the rest of it.
UPDATE: "The Official Word Via Roger Simon( AKA- The Chief"" - Thanks Harry.
Oh man, I just found out that Baldilocks is my new "Blog Boss". So much for all the swearing and goings on around this place for awhile.
Posted @ November 22, 2005 09:24 AM | Current Affairs | Comments (1)
Sorry Kids....
Another CAVU weekend. Ahhhh...
I'm out on the bike for a little ride in Gold Country for a little Rest and Relaxation, which for me means finding the tightest curves on the smallest roads and going as fast as I can. We all have our vices, and this one is mine.
For software people, the end of year is either the busiest time of year or the slowest. For me, this year is a 20-hour-a-day meatgrinder for the rest of year, so Im trying to take as much time and get outside whenever I can, because I'll be virtually bound to the keyboard as the release date gets closer and closer. Im off of "real work" for the week, so I have a few dozen things to get to during this holiday week, including dumping a gallon of adrenaline into my bloodstream and attempting to ride my bike while I still dont need cold weather gear, which wont be for much longer.
I'll bring a camera with me, maybe that will suffice for the lack of blogging.
I'm in a great mood. El Commandante Fidel Castro has Parkinsons -I'm hoping its the long painful and humiliating type if there is such a thing, Zarkawi may or may not be dead but he's certainly not getting any gifts for Ramadan this year from the folks at home.
So excuse me for a bit while I spend some time praying at the altar of Our Lady of Blessed Acceleration...
Posted @ November 20, 2005 02:22 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (0)
How Wrestling Builds Character
By Coach Dennis Hastert.
"House Republicans, sensing an opportunity for political advantage, maneuvered for a quick vote and swift rejection Friday of a Democratic lawmaker's call for an immediate troop withdrawal from Iraq."
"We want to make sure that we support our troops that are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan," said Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill. "We will not retreat."
Imagine where we would be if Senator Frist had shown the character of this man. Oh, and by the way, Thank you Speaker Hastert for mentioning the "war-that-dare-not-speak-its-name" Afghanistan.
Posted @ November 18, 2005 01:34 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (1)
Not.One.Freakin.Dime
Is there any victory secured by the United States Armed Services that cannot be stolen and turned into defeat at the hands of the cowards in the Congress?
Republican Senator John Warner of Virginia, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee said this:
"This amendment as drawn is a very powerful, very powerful statement by Congress - if the House adopts it, but certainly by the Senate - of the need to tell the Iraqi people that we have done our share, we are not going to leave them, but we expect from them equal if not greater support than they have given to this date," said Mr. Warner.
The amendment, attached to a defense authorization bill, calls for 2006 to be a period of significant transition to full Iraqi sovereignty, with Iraqi forces taking the lead in providing security.
Well thanks for that Senator Warner. I knew you were blind when you not only dated but married Elizabeth Taylor, but thanks to you actions today, I know you’re gigantic dumbass as well.
Did anyone tell you that the President is overseas right this very minute? Did anyone tell you that the Secretary of State is busy at work in Israel right now? How does this help, Senator Warner? Oh, maybe I phrased it wrong because I’m sure you read that as “ How does this help Senator Warner?” which is your first and only thought. Screw the guys on the front line, screw the people who have already died, I've got my phony baloney job to look out for.
Senator Warner, does it occur to you that the Iraqis are working their asses off to take control of their country? Does it occur to you that they are dying every day in their country? Does it occur to you that up till now the official view of this country is that THEY ARE ALREADY SOVERIEGN, BUT THANKS TO YOU AND YOUR HEADLINE OXYGEN SUCKING BLATHER, THEY THINK THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN A FRAUD? Yes, our men and women are dying, but so are theirs. How condescending can you be to people who have struggled in the front line of the war on terror to say such an asinine thing?
Harry Reid said this today that the President needed to “take the training wheels off the Iraqi government”. I’m not an Iraqi, I’m an American and there is nothing I have ever heard uttered by a member of my government that has made me angrier than that statement. Training wheels? Are the Iraqis babies? People who have taken on the burden of Saddam and the Tikriti clan, outright genocide to have a hack politician from Nevada call them babies? You should be censored for that Senator. The Iraqis aren’t a burden on this country, they are a godsend, they are our allies, they passed the ‘global test’ they are the emerging third world we all hope to help, and you COWARDS cant wait to beat feet out of their at the earliest opportunity.
When are we leaving Korea Senator Reid, do you think South Korea has a good Set of “training wheels’ yet? How bout that broken and destroyed 3rd world country called “Germany”? How about Bosnia, you think they got their act together yet? How about the war whose name shall not be spoken, you know? Afghanistan? How about Japan and their training wheels?
Where the hell is the Majority leader to allow this to happen? Frist?
Got the hell off TV and Call your office, now!
The President needs to go to war on the Senate. He comes back; he calls the republican leadership into his office; he shows them the pen. You know the pen I mean too, the veto pen. He tells them “ Kiss my ass if you think I’m signing a goddamned thing for anyone at anytime. We’ll just sit here for the next three years and we’ll see which of you figures out that the Executive branch actually means something in this government”.
I'm standing with the President on this one, and I don’t much care if we lose the Senate at this point, because as far as I cant tell, we already have. These pinheads can sit in the minorty for awhile for all I care.
Not one dime you jackasses, not one freakin’ dime.
UPDATE: Some of you have taken me to task for my colorful use of language. Language is a part of culture. My culture is that of a man raised by a Navy Chief Petty Officer, who was himself raised by a Navy Chief Petty Officer. I can assure you that while my language was 'colorful' and perhaps out of the mainstream, within the culture in which I was raised it would be considered reserved and restrained, which is to say that my keyboard has rather large dents in certain vowel and consonant combinations.
I can also assure each of you that there are many people who think they know how to cuss, but no one can do it like a Navy Chief, except of course for two Navy Chiefs. There are still dark clouds that hang over Long Beach Navy Shipyard that ring of my fathers and grandfathers loud thunderous and profane blusters...
Posted @ November 15, 2005 03:43 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (22)
Quickly
Michael Fumento responds to those who are determined to believe that the "bird flu" spells the end of mankind.
Quote: ..."Bottom line? We are all going to die. But from various causes. There probably will be another pandemic, but nobody knows when or what its origin will be. We do know that with every month that passes, we'll be better prepared. Unless the current panic, having failed to materialize, makes us overly complacent. That's a real possibility. In 1976, swine flu went from "next pandemic" to laugh line on Saturday Night Live in record time. And as for those anointed experts, public health officials, and reporters whose wall calendars always read "1918" – it's time to buy a new one."
Posted @ November 14, 2005 08:41 AM | Current Affairs | Comments (1)
Notice
When its a 75 degree CAVU** day in November, you dont sit inside the house blogging.
That being said, I've got a big post coming on "what might have been", so I'll be right back after dinner.
(** CAVU : Ceiling and Visibility Unlimited. Light winds. Its enough to make a VFR pilot like me cry...)
Posted @ November 13, 2005 04:39 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (1)
The J. Patrick Buchanan Memorial Library for Failed Prophets of Doom
Imagine if you will, a library that is stocked with books that relate to one thing, the Cassandra like predictions from the past that have failed to come true. A Library entirely dedicated to the published works of blowhards, pundits, college professors, and economists everywhere who like the sound of their voice and are certain that they have seen the end times just around the corner. But for some reason never seem to be able to predict the disaster we all know is waiting for us out in the murky future. The Library should serve as a warning to all who wish to see the future darker than it really is.
It would be a hell of a thing wouldn’t it? Row after row of books that predict the end of the world and “why you need to do something now to survive it and for 19.99 you can buy my book to tell you how to make the most of the coming ice age/global warming/polluted cities”. Just think of all the people who have made big predictions about how “really screwed you are”, book after book, year after year, they keep coming and the public doesnt seem to be able to get enough.
Remember back in the 1980s how every other book was about how Japan was going to rule the world and the Germans really won the war and were going to dominate us economically, and we should just learn to accept our new Japanese overlords? Remember right up to the day the Berlin Wall fell people were still predicting that World War III was just around the corner and if only you would have the common sense to buy their book on the end of the world, you could see it too. Communism my friend, that’s where the future is, Captialism is on its last legs, you’ll see. Even today, despite the failures of New Orleans, and the failure of Old Orleans, there are still people who think the Socialist model works. But don’t let a little thing like facts and evidence get in the ways of your ideas kids…
I grew up in the 1970s. I saw movie after move that predicted with absolute certainty the end of humanity that was just around the corner. I watched them all, and besides the fact that they almost all had Charlton Heston in them they also had one other thing in common, they all said our collective human goose was cooked and there was no way were could survive much longer that soon we would all be reduced to eating our neighbors and using the dried out skins of their pets as fuel.
I found myself watching “The Omega Man” the other day, and at one point, these as scene where the haggard survivors look at a calendar on the wall and see the date when “it all went to hell” – It was May 1975!
I remember when I was a kid and that date was off in the future and I wondered, “gosh, will we make it?” and I was seriously worried that we weren’t going to make it, that the world would end, just like it did in the movie. Yet, the day came and went and to my surprise, we were getting along just fine. Sure, we had our daily things to get through but we didn’t have “Matthias and the Family (ed: Stone?)” roaming the streets and my dad didn’t have a .50 caliber machine gun mounted on top of the house. It was just normal every day life in the ‘burbs. Go to work, pay the bills, watch TV, go on vacation, say, what’s that VCR things the neighbors got and who would pay for TV?
Now, some 30 years later, it seems laughable to think that I was seriously worried about the future, when to look back at it the worst and scariest part of what the future would be was over on the last days of the 1970s.
There’s a staggering number of these “doom” books on the market, here’s just a few that stick in my mind:
The European Dream: How Europe's Vision of the Future Is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream
Why Europe Will Run the 21st Century
Time Bomb 2000: What the Year 2000 Computer Crisis Means to You! Revised & Updated Edition
There’s a whole wing in my proposed “library of failure” dedicated to that great economics prognosticator, Ravi Batra who never saw an economics indicator that didn’t lead to a great depression and the end to Capitalism. Here’s just a few of his greatest hits:
Stock Market Crashes of 1998 and 1999: The Asian Crisis and Your Future
The Crash of the Millennium : Surviving the Coming Inflationary Depression
The Downfall of Capitalism and Communism: Can Capitalism Be Saved?
Not content to have blown it in 1990, he goes on to try again in 1995. Ooops, ok lets try end of the millennium. Damn…. Ok, sure the stock market did go down in 2000. They do that, they go up and they go down, but you cant call the time a “depression” unless of course you were in the software industry at the time, but that’s not what he was talking about. He’s talking about soup lines, dust bowl, tortilla flat, hobo jungles, you know all that stuff, not the little bubble of the internet and Y2K.
I was also reminded of all those great books about how “America is doomed” that became so popular right after Bush became President, Today, In the light of Frances rising problems with the Arab street, which is now quickly becoming Europe’s problem as well and in light of the rejection of the EU constitution and a continual european economic disaster that would get a US President removed from office in this country if he had anything close to the economics of the Europeans, these books seem rather silly to me.
No one should look twice at books like these if their prediction fail to come true, but the people who write these books are rarely called to account for their predictions. They make predictions, the predictions fail to come true, and they make even more ridiculous predictions, and people keep buying the books! For some people, like Ravi Batra, after awhile you have to wonder if its “prediction” that he’s doing or expressing his own wishful thinking. I wonder sometimes if most of doom prediction of the future is in fact wishful thinking in some perverse way.
The king of silly predictions of the future is Hal Lindsey, writer of the book “ the late Great Planet Earth”, this book started a boom in books that spelled out the pre-apocalyptic predictions of the coming to a theatre near you future that we were all doomed to live in. These disaster books were the kind that would give you detail after detail about how the future was just a big stinking pile of doom followed by a big hairy disaster.
But once again, none of it has come true! No Famines, no 'rise of the global anti-Christ (Marilyn Manson does not count), the Soviet or Chinese domination of Arab oil fields, nothing. Zip nada. Yet, no one holds him to account, they just assume that he must’ve gotten the dates slightly off and he goes on to publish even more fanciful accounts of the disasters that are yet to be! I mean as a budding writer, I admire the cojones of someone being that wrong that often and still managing to get a publisher to dump 100,000 copies on the market every year. It's Nice work if you can get it.
But there is something about the future that we in the modern world have managed to turn upside down. The future is truly unknowable, but for some reason we have decided that it must be filled only with doom, dread and disaster. There is no equal consideration for how things might just be better, despite all the evidence that things in general are much better than they were in the past.
If we were to go back to the world of 1905, we would see a world very different from our own. A world largely without paved rual roads and interstate highways, rural electricity, inoculations to immunize against childhood polio and thousands of other diseases that were commonplace at the time, antibiotics and penicillin, food and drug standards, building codes, child labor laws, sewage systems, and yet in the modern age people are convinced that stray electrons from power lines and cell phones antenna radiation will kill you. All those things I listed are things that have bettered the lives of billions of people but to the world of 1905, they barely existed. You tell someone in 1905 that there’s a one in a billion chance that their child might get autism from a polio inoculation and they will just point to half a dozen kids in their area who are severly crippled from the disease and then they will tell you of half a dozen other families where the afflicted child didn’t survive at all. In 1905, you expected that at least one of your children would die before they reached puberty, today, no one lives with that expectation. Ive seen what the just the word "polio" can do to older folks, they remember real horror, not the fake made up crap of today.
How did the human race survive all of that to end up at a point where today it’s practically afraid of its own shadow? We are all the descendants of those who came before us, who in each of their lives saw and experienced things daily that would make each of us wet our pants in fear. We face none of those horrible things in our lives today, yet we are more in fear of life itself than any of those people were in theirs while they faced very real threats and not the imagined ones of that we face in ours.
Why is that? And why were the people of 1905 so positive about the future and we are so negative?
By Comparison to the world of 1905, we live in a golden age, an age of tremendous bounty, an age of wealth unknown to any generation of mankind since the start of civilization. With the exception of the Irish Potato famine, there hasn’t been a famine in the western world in 200 years. Famine was once a common occurance in the human condition,yet today, outside of Communist and Socialist Central Planning economies, they are rare indeed. Human Populations, rather than increasing exponentially to our eventual doom are actually decreasing, many parts of the world are actually in negative population growth, which is something none of the Sci-fi movies that Charlton Heston stared in managed to predict.
In today’s world, you are not allowed to say that the future is bright because to do so is to expose yourself to ridicule as a know nothing fool. Just today, I made the mistake of saying to a friend that the economy was in my opinion actually doing pretty well. In return for that opinion, and I got a 20-minute lecture on how terrible things were and how he had never seen it so bad.
“You must’ve forgotten the Carter years”, I said in retort. When I brought up the statistics of the Carter years, the double digit unemployment, the double digit inflation rates and home interest rates, the inability to get any gas at any price, he agreed that things were bad then but that they would soon be just as bad.
"Soon? You mean, they aren’t now?" I asked.
No, they aren’t that that bad now, but they are going to be, you just wait and see”
So there you have it, just wait, things will get worse. You’ll see. And how can you argue with it? I mean despite the fact that things are actually better than they were, and little facts like that I suppose, but hey...
Today we see the opposite of the mood of the 1990’s. In the 1990’s no bad news ever got in the way of feeling good about things in general, but into today’s world no good news gets in the way of feeling bad. its directly the opposite, but its just as idiotic, yet the negative one is given more credibility than the other more positive one.
I watched news reports the other day that talked about how bad it was that Gasoline prices were going down, when just a month before it was the end of the western world that it was going up with no end in sight.
I watched Exxon Mobile get knocked by the market on its quarterly earnings, which were the best in 32 years because analysts had said that it was “below expectations”. Below expectations? Who is it that set expectations so high that they could not be reached in a market where they had done better than at any time in the past 32 years?
Are we all a little guilty of setting expectations too high right now? Do we all set expectations so high that they can never be reached, and if they are reached we find ourselves looking for reasons to discount the good news as suspect and really just evidence of bad things to come, even when the news is really genuine good news?
Yikes, following logic like that is like following an Escher painting…
“Irrational exuberance” was the phrase the Fed chairman used to describe the 1990s. “Irrational negativity” is what I call the new millennium. I used to think it was just President Bush that was getting the bad news treatment, but I’ve come to see that its just about everything that goes on these days is just a setup for someone to say ‘see, I told you, signs and portents of disasters to come”
Today’s apocalyptic talk centers on the near certainty of the rise of bird flu throughout the world. Everyone is absolutely convinced that, the flu will come and it will kill millions of people. Yet, there’s no evidence that the flu will mutate and that once mutated it will prove to be fatal. I know several people who are frankly scared to death at the possibility of getting the flu, even though I tell them that their chances of dying from the flu are pretty small. It is almost as if they need to worry about it.
Here’s the thing about the “bird flu”; there isn’t one damn thing you can do about it, so you might as well stop worrying about it.
I mean besides washing your hands everytime you go in public and covering your face when you sneeze, there is almost nothing you can do to prepare for something as awful as a repeat of the 1918 Flu epidemic. Take your flu shot if it’s available, but don’t sit around and squirm that it’s all over for you if you don’t. Why squirm around and get upset about it? Why not enjoy the world that is rather than worry about what might go away in the future?
Maybe, it will happen, maybe it won’t, but worrying about it isn’t going to keep it away. If it makes you feel like you are in control by worrying, then go ahead, do it. But for Gods sake don’t write a book about it. I’m afraid the J. Patrick Buchanan Memorial Library for Failed Prophets of Doom is getting mighty full these days. We may have to open a branch in a town near you if you all don’t put a lid on all this gloom and doom crap.
Stop whining and go have fun, enjoy yourselves, your ancestors worked hard to get you where you are. Go read Ravi Batra and laugh at a grown man who consistently acts like a fool but not nearly as much a fool as those who take him seriously no matter how many times hes proven to be wrong.
Update: Why J. Patrick Buchanan instead of Patrick J. Buchanan? easy, its pompus and inexplicably funnier that way, just like the man himself. After all, the great prognosticator who wrote the book "Conservative votes, liberal victories: Why the right has failed" deserves to be remembered for posterity. Why is that funny? because he wrote it in 1975. 4 years later, The Reagan revolution was underway and it would be 12 years before another Democrat president and in 14 years, the Senate and the House the South and most Govenorships would be solidly in the hands the Republicans. But for our "prophet of doom", all that would not be good enough, in fact all that success would just be proof to Pat that the Republicans werent conservative enough, so he would leave the Republicans to join the reform party.
Gee, that worked out swell, didnt it Pat...
Posted @ November 09, 2005 01:13 AM | Current Affairs | Comments (7)
Notice
...Im Back in the saddle again.
The Posting Floodgates are open again now that I have returned from my far away duties. I have quite a backload of posts to get to as well, so hold on to your hats. just because I havent been posting doesnt mean I havent been writing...
Posted @ November 08, 2005 08:27 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (0)
Question for the Muslim apologists out there
Im still busy with "other things", but I have a question or two for those who insist that it is we in the West who are the ones who are really the troublemakers.
Q: Can you name a Muslim country in which a Christian or Jewish minority has revolted against the Muslim Majority in a fashion similar to what is currently underway in France?
Q: If such a thing were to have existed, what would we expect the reaction of the Muslim government to be in respect to the protection of the rights of the Christians or Jews who did not take part in the insurrection?
Q: What is the penalty for attending Christian Church services or Jewish Synagogue in Saudi Arabia? Can it be said that it is somewhat more severe than that of Communist China?
This is my way of saying that what is going on in France has NOTHING to do with "jobs and the poor put-upon immigrants...".
... and you know what bothers me the most about France? its how fast France fell against the Nazis and how few people expected it to happen. Im extremely bothered by the spread and density of this insurrection and appaled at the lack of response in any fashion by the French government. This is the worst of all possible worlds
Today the Muslim Insurrection is against cars and firefighters. Tommorow it will be stores, then malls and shopping centers, then bridges, then powerlines, then schools, then libraries, and what will the response be? to try to understand their anger? or to finally understand that what one was France is soon to be no more. And while it may be fun to poke at the French, this is not the time. If the Muslim Insurrection is seen to be successful in achieving its goals, it will spread everywhere.
Posted @ November 07, 2005 03:34 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (0)
New Toys: Slingbox
Slingbox: An Internet Video Server for your home.(no kidding!...)
I’ve been a big fan of the Tivo since it first came out; in fact I still have one of the very first Tivos ever made. While I was then and am now a big fan, there are some places that Tivo could still be improved. The latest Tivo, The Series Two, has a feature known as “ Tivo To Go”, which allows you to download recorded media from the Tivo to your PC and watch it later. This implementation relies on the Tivo being networked to your home network so that your PC can connect to the Tivo. Unfortunately, this is where the whole process collapses. To network the Tivo, you are required to use a USB network card, either a USB Cat 5 Wired connection or a USB Wireless. It sounds easy doesn’t it? Oh but its not! First, the CAT5 connection is fine so long as you have a wired network connection next to where your TV is located, and even for a web based internet living guy like myself, that just isn’t the case. So you are left with the USB Wireless. Unfortunately, Tivo limited the make and type of Wireless cards that can be used on the Tivo, so its not like you can just go get the latest and greatest 802.11g USB Network card, plug it in and go.
What you end up with, if you do it the way Tivo would like you to do it, is an 802.11b (11mb or less) connection on which to download video. This results in a connection that can take up to 4 hours to download a 1 hour movie. So, Tivo has given a solution that allows you to download a one hour Tivo show roughly twice a day, because unlike the processed used for Movielink, you are required to download the entire show before you can watch it.
The “Tivo to Go” idea is a good one, but the implementation of the networking facility was, at best, lacking in the fundamentals. First, it was difficult to get working and when it did finally get working after a week of trying various cards, it was hardly worth the effort. I evaluated the solution this way; if I was a non technical casual user, could I have dealt with the arcane issues of drivers and network setup that was required to get just the right USB card working on the Tivo? The answer is no. Tivo was so picky about which USB card it would use that I found that certain cards would not work, even from the same vendor and type, so long as the serial number was not in a certain range. Given the technical help that exists at the average big box electronic store, there’s very little hope that the average "mom and dad" would be able to get through this issue with ease.
What Tivo could have done is to place a Wireless network card into the device at the point of manufacturing, but they didn’t. What they did is force you to go through the ridiculous and tedious process of setting up the network device on your own. In the effort to save cost of manufacturing, they in fact alienated many "power users" who up till then had been big fans of the product.
The basic problem is this, you have a Tivo, and you want to access the stored content from any PC in your home with ease and speed. In addition, you would like to be able to access the Tivo Content in real time, rather than deal with the download process before you can access the information. The leaping assumption on the part of many of us in the internet age is that anything that’s is stored on a readable media should be able to able to be accessed from any PC from anywhere in the world.
This is where a new device, called a "Slingbox"
I found the Slingbox a very easy product to implement and I had it up and running in less than a half hour. Slingbox has solved the problem of “I want to watch my tivo in room A, but I’m in room B” as well as solving my “ I want to watch my Tivo, but I’m in Malaysia an the Tivo is in California” problem as well. All the software worked in the first try and the written documentation is well organized and well presented. If I were at the Tivo company, I would either be buying the Slingbox company, or I would busily be adding the same capability to the Tivo. The Slingbox is a perfect addition to the Tivo world.
Slingbox works on any number of DVR’s, DVD players and it even allows access to the direct antenna, both Analog and Digital.
For a first time product, the folks at Slingbox have a hit on their hand that will likely redefine the industry. Their challenge is to stay ahead of class. If they are not careful, you will find all of this type of web based video server technology added to every DVR in the house in no time at all. To stay ahead of the game, Slingbox also needs to get on with the HD capability very quickly. In addition, Slingbox needs to implement a form of DVR to the PC to allow PC users to download for viewing later when you are not connected to a network.
In no time at all, the rest of us will be cursing Slingbox users for sucking up all the bandwidth in the internet, while the Network Television types will continue to curse the rise of the timeshifting technology that will have effectively wrecked their industry. It was said by many observers that when Tivo first came out, that the consumer effectively became their your own television station, and now with Slingbox, that is very much the case as you are now capable of broadcasting as well!
The Slingbox implementation is one of the easiest that I have worked with in some time. Connected to your Tivo, the Slingbox gives you all that you originally wanted from the "Tivo to Go" implementation,but sadly didnt get.
Note: And how did I solve my wireless problem with the Tivo, Xbox and now the Slingbox without laying down a 1000 feet of CAT5 cable?. For the Tivo I used a USB CAT5 Connection, in fact for the XBOX and the Slingbox all use CAT5, but the CAT5 connections all terminate at a local switch, which is then connected to an 802.11G Wireless Access Point which serves as a bridge to the main wireless router in the house. All the devices work just as they would on a wired connection, the 54gb connection being more that sufficient to drive all three devices at the same time. The "tivo to go" download speeds now results in a hour show downloading in about 30 minutes, which is a vast improvement over the 802.11b connection provided by Tivo.
Posted @ November 06, 2005 11:01 AM | Current Affairs | Comments (1)
Paris
Im busy with other things right now but theres a couple of quick notes Id like to get out.
1) It ceases to be a riot when it goes beyond 72 hours. We call that sort of thing an "insurrection". We can now officially call it "the French Intifadah".
2) Yassir Arafat was last seen alive in Paris. Im not one to believe in spirits and ghosts and posession of souls, but this appears to be pretty big evidence of such a thing.
3)Basic Civilization 101: You are in charge as long as you act like you are in charge. Frances' government is close to a tipping point where it will no longer appear to be "in charge". Will the French Socialist Government be forced to "Martial Law"?
4)You cant stop this without attacking the very people who have been lionized by the left; therefore the French Government will pull their punches and the result is that this will not go away quickly, but will instead fester into a far worse problem. This is the Guliani " broken window" crime theory written large.
5)This will not be reported by the Western Press until Bush can be blamed for it.
Posted @ November 04, 2005 03:08 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (0)
EXCLUSIVE PHOTOS! CIA Secret Prison Network!
Low Level aerial photos have revealed this CIA Prison somewhere in "Eastern Europe".
This man, AKA "John Drake" or AKA "Number 6" or " Akeem Abdul",
has revealed to the worlds press and the UN Human Rights Commission, that at this location he was repeatedly asked for "information" in a way that was clearly outside of the protocols of the geneva convention. "John Drake" or "Akeem" as he prefers to be called, has also revealed that at no point in his incarceration was he afforded access to legal assistance and access to recreational facilties was repeatedly blocked by the "large white ballon" which this reporter has been told are actually the souless robotic guards for this installation and not the Senior Senator from Massachusetts as one would assume.
"John Drake" escaped the facility known as "the village" and reported directly to the UN Human Rights Commission. His handwritten map of the facility is being used by the UN to help locate it for the authorities. Syria, Cuba and North Korea have called for a joint session of the Security Council in order that the issue of the secret CIA Detention facilities, like the one in which innocent Islamic men like "John Drake" have long suffered can be closed once and for all...
What the hell happened to the CIA? Once upon a time, they could overthrow countries, fake moon landings, shoot presidents in Dallas and plant fake evidence on patsys with regularity, now they cant even keep a few offsite prisons secret from the press.
How hard can it be? cmon guys, its a little detention center fergawds sake...
Does anyone else remember the good old days? when like in "three days of the Condor" where the CIA ran entire spy analyst operations right in the middle of town, who all get killed ( by others in the CIA no less!) and no one notices a thing? Howard Hughes actually built an entire spy ship and deployed it for the CIA. "Air America", jeez! an entire freakin airline. Whats more, IT MADE A PROFIT WHILE STILL DOING ITS SECRET MISSION!!! try that today and someones nose would get all out of joint that the CIA wasnt using union labor and as a result would be violating Davis/Bacon and they would have to shut the whole thing down. Spy satellite programs, Lockheed A-12 and U-2 Spyplanes, Targeted assassinations, blackmail and coersion of unfriendly governments, now THAT is a CIA.
I get the feeling that either the recruitment standards at "the Company" have fallen, or the staff at Langley just dont feel like trying very hard these days. Ok, the "Hellfire Armed Predator Drone" is cool and thanks for the excellent job on Afghanistan, but its just doesnt mean as much if we have to ask you to do those things, its your job, we shouldnt have to ask you to do it, it should just get done, ok? Its like you made us sign in triplicate that it was "Ok" to tip over the outhouse that was the Taliban. Gosh, do you think it was ok? I sure do, so why did we even have to ask to get the obvious done. Poof, gone! Why is Chavez still in power? He's Castro with oil you meatheads! Now go induce a little "President Gamel Nasser" Style middle of the night heart attack for him and let's go put that problem out, ok? I dont want to be talking about him with my grandkids like we do now with castro. I dont want have Castro die of old age only to be replaced with "Hugo".
Ok, Im sorry about the whole "Church Commission" thing but that was so long ago, cant we move on now? We said were wrong, we said were sorry, now could you please get back into being the malevolent bastards we expect you to be and not the overpaid hourly accountants youve become, ok?
I liked the CIA that killed people and overthrew governments just for the practice and sport of it. This new "accountants" CIA can stay home for all the good it does. For all we know, Kim il Jung could be in his secret hollowed out volcano right now, and would the CIA have someone in there? No... of course not, because "oh, boohoo that would be wrong and we might get into trouble"...
The CIA I grew up with would have had the brains and the balls to PLANT some WMDS and not let the President and the country get a bad reputation because it got moved to Syria in the middle of the night. The CIA I know would have shot Osama in the head 24 hours after the WTC fell then replayed the video on a loop while handing out cigars in the lobby of the main building of Langley.
Gentlemen, a little less "Valery Plame" and a little more "Wild Bill" if you please...
UPDATE: If you never watched the TV show "The Prisoner", then the first part of this post isnt going to work for you...
Posted @ November 03, 2005 12:18 AM | Current Affairs | Comments (0)
After Five Days
At what point do we start calling it the "Paris Intifadah?"
Posted @ November 01, 2005 10:38 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (0)
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