Oh, Give Me A Home
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Sarin Song
Words for tonight’s CBC/CTV National News Singalong;
(sung to Folsom Prison Blues)
Well, t’was just a little sarin…
Why, nothing here to see
George Bush exaggerated..
Not much WMD…
Hans Blix, he says ’tis nuthin,
And so, believe you me..
Now, back to Rumsfeld’s prison:
“A man who sprained his knee…”
Helprin Is Back
I can say, without any reservation whatsoever, that Mark Helprin is the best fiction writer currently drawing breath.
From Winter’s Tale -“Nothing is random, nor will anything ever be, whether a long string of perfectly blue days that begin and end in golden dimness, the most seemingly chaotic politcal acts, the rise of a great city, the crystalline structure of a gem that has never seen the light, the distributions of fortune, what time the milkman gets up, the position of the electron, or the occurrence of one astonishingly frigid winter after another. Even electrons, supposedly the paragons of unpredictability, are tame and obsequious little creatures that rush around at the speed of light, going precisely where they are supposed to go. They make faint whistling sounds that when apprehended in varying combinations are as pleasant as the wind flying through a forest, and they do exactly as they are told. Of this, one can be certain.”
Few had heard of Helprin before he penned Bob Dole’s senate retirement speech on the eve of his run for the presidency. (I can’t find it online.) Helprin has other writing available, much of it political. His Written On Water series is archived online at the Wall Street Journal.
One unfortunate consequence of reading Helprin, is that it can be extremely frustrating to read other writers in his wake. A Soldier Of The Great War has had that effect on me, and on others. Judging by discussion on email groups, he has an extremely devoted following – (and frustrated – damn you Helprin – write something…) And it’s interesting to watch the reaction of the leftist, anti-war devotees he draws, who safely assume their favorite genius is likeminded. For someone who writes like this –
“Only in the lightning and in the foreground is the light active. The woman and the soldier steal the light and color from everything that is in ruin. Unclothed and unprotected, with her baby in her arms, she defies the storm unwittingly. Entirely at risk, she shines out. Don’t you understand? She’s his only hope. After what he’s seen, only she and the child can put the world in balance. And yet the soldier is distant, protected, detached. They always say about the soldier that he’s detached. That’s true, for he’s in the eye of the storm, his heart has been broken, and he doesn’t even know it.”
… couldn’t possibly think like this.
Lots of other good stuffat the traffic jam today.
Antonia Zerbisias
Zerbisias isn’t too bright. She has overlooked one important fact about “warbloggers”.
We don’t have editors.
Select Commission On Gettysburg
Via RWN;
Mr. Ben-Gorelick: Good evening, President Lincoln. The Select Commission on Gettysburg thanks you for taking time out from the Civil War to appear.
Lincoln: You’re welcome, sir. I respect the commission.
Mr. Ben-Gorelick: Before I get to the blunders at Gettysburg, sir, I must ask about the speech you just gave there dedicating the cemetery. This “Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth.” Do you have the?
Lincoln: I know it.
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Mr. Ben-Gorelick: And yet – and I’ll put this text in the record – there’s not a single reference in this speech to saving the union.
Lincoln: It’s implied.
Mr. Ben-Gorelick: Not a single reference. Isn’t it a fact that you said in the speech, “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal..”
Lincoln: Yes, in the first sentence.
Mr. Ben-Gorelick: And isn’t it a fact that you say, and again I quote, “that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.” ?
Lincoln: Yes.
Mr. Ben-Gorelick: Isn’t it a fact that you were referring to slavery?
Lincoln: Well, yes. But I also said, second paragraph, that they died, quote, “that nation might live.”
Mr. Ben-Gorelick: Yes, but what nation, sir? Clearly, your real goal is to abolish slavery. You took us to war under false pretense, didn’t you, sir?
Go read the whole thing. Priceless “commentary” by Chris Matthews, too… “I’m here with the Gettysburg widows.”
Fuel Economy In Relative Terms
Sean at Pol:Spy compares gasoline prices to HP printer ink costs. I’m sort of on the same page as he is.
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I get around 12 mpg in my 86 Dodge pickup. As inefficient as that is, I cannot justify replacing it with a newer, fuel efficient car. And I’ve looked into it. |
Why not? It’s paid for, and costs 41$ a month to insure. Occassional repairs are part of the deal, but they are inexpensive as repairs go, and used parts are available if need be. The original cost in buying it used ($5K) 5 years ago, and then replacing the engine ($3K) – far less than buying a new or newer car or truck would have been. I don’t think twice about its reliability before taking it to Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Chicago.
The actual cost of a newer vehicle in payments, depreciation and insurance more than eat up any fuel savings, and when you live on a budget in which you have no idea from month to month what your income is going to be – that’s an issue.
And then there’s this: if you think that paying $90 to drive a full size pickup the 6 hours from Saskatoon to Calgary is expensive – try mailing it instead.
Book Reviews
Amusing when you read these book reviews of “Dark Age Ahead” by Jane Jacobs side by side.
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Patrick Watson, Globe And Mail First among her detested experts are North American traffic engineers. It was Jane Jacobs who led the fight against New York Planner Robert Moses’s proposal to wreck Washington Square by pushing a freeway right through it; and in Toronto, her adopted city since 1969, against the developers who wanted to drive multiple freeways into the heart of the city, clogging and polluting it even more than it is with the resulting rush of one-person cars, developers who in the process wanted to destroy gracious old landmarks, including the St. Lawrence Centre, Union Station and the Old City Hall. Jacobs recounts a couple of key incidents in which traffic engineers have declared rules of road safety and economics for which they are able to adduce absolutely no evidence, and concludes that in the traffic trade, judgments are often closer to doctrine and superstition than to engineering and science. “Among other elements that make a congregation of people work as a human community, with the richness of random encounter, gossip and intercourse that nourish collaboration and social invention, Jacobs admires boulevards. Traffic engineers, she writes, declare that boulevards, with their vision- obstructing trees and confusing access roads, are a major cause of accidents, injury and death. But they offer no evidence. And a major international study of boulevards — which in France, Portugal, Buenos Aires and elsewhere contribute graciously to the kind of community in which, in Jacobs’s view, democracy and civility thrive — found zero evidence to support the traffic engineers’ doctrine. Or superstition.” |
Bruce Ramsey, Seattle Times; Jacobs, who turns 88 this year, has some of the same themes in this book, particularly her criticism of cars. Now a Canadian living in Toronto, she does not drive and does not defer to the interests of those who do. Her book should have been presented as an attack on individual transport, because that is what she wants to discuss. Her first chapter on the decline in civilization, “Families Rigged to Fail,” might have been about divorce, unwed mothers, absent dads or even the Internet, but instead is about cars. Cars keep people apart. People use cars, she says, because General Motors bought up the streetcar companies in the 1930s “for the sake of selling oil, rubber tires and internal combustion vehicles.” GM was “determined to force unlimited numbers of gasoline-powered, internal-combustion vehicles on America.” I have one of GM’s vehicles, though I did not know how dastardly the company had been in forcing me to buy it. The next chapter is about the spread of credentialism in higher education, which might be a fruitful topic. Credentialism, she says, is about qualifying people for jobs, which America has made “the grand cultural purpose of life,” partly with large government programs to create jobs, such as the interstate highway system. Which is about cars. The next chapter — this is a book about a new Dark Age, remember — is called “Science Abandoned” and is about how Americans are giving up the scientific way of thinking. This might also be a fruitful topic, about creationism perhaps, or astrology. Instead she steers the reader to traffic management. Cars again! She has discovered that when a road is closed, only some of the traffic is diverted. Some of it disappears. (She is right.) She says the traffic engineers won’t admit that, and are blind to the scientific way of thinking. |
Reality Check
Someone wrote in my comments:
For every American killed in Iraq, 100 Iraqi wemon [sic] and children should publicly be beheaded. Kill them all.”
Yeah, I have to admit, that there are days when I think of a future in which we sit around on a Saturday evening, drinking wine coolers, thinking of the soft green glow far beyond the eastern horizon and the “Seven Minute War”…
“Darn. Maybe that was overkill.. oh well, no time for second guessing… who knew President Kerry had it in him?…”
Then, I go read Zayed and Alaa and I change my mind.
Two
At only 15.3 hands, he’s small. Nice size for a Quarter horse. Rock Hard Ten and Eddington and most other thoroughbreds tower over him. He’s survived the murder of his trainer and a skull fracture.
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They say his pedigree lacks stamina and star power. Secretariat, Foolish Pleasure, Mr Prospector, Northern Dancer – all now generations back. And maybe he does – the mile and half Belmont is yet to come. But he’s yet to be beaten, on any track, by any rival. He’s won 7 million. He took the Kentucky Derby in the mud, under a jockey making his first Derby start and a trainer with his first Derby entry. And he won the Preakness today by 11 1/2 lengths – a new record. Go, Smarty. |
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Udday Is Gone
And for the first time since 1988, the Iraqi Olympic football team has successfully passed the qualifiers . They’re headed for Athens.
Anonymous Firebombers Charged
Three suspects charged in the Montreal firebombing of a Jewish school made a video court appearance today. The two 18-year- old men and a woman in her 30’s entered pleas of not guilty. They’ll be back in court on Monday for a bail hearing.
The men face charges of arson and conspiracy. The woman is charged with being an accomplice after the fact.
Where are the names?
Norm Spector updates: Two men were released after questioning; two others have been charged. They are: Sleman Elmerhebi and Simon Zogheib. Accomplice after the fact is the mother of Elmerhebi, Rouba Fahd Elmerhebi.
“Learn To Take It”
Jihad spokesman says Canadians were mean to Khadrs”
According to a translation of an article written by Abu Ayman al-Hilali, a senior al-Qaeda leader and ideologist, the United States, Britain, France, Italy, Canada, Germany, and Australia are “enemies” and attacks against their civilians are justified. Since Western governments are engaged in a war against Islam, he argued, the civilian voters who elect those governments cannot be considered non-combatants and are legitimate targets for terrorists.
In an interview in Islamabad yesterday, Mr. Khawaja, who fought with bin Laden in Afghanistan and openly admits he supports jihad activities, provided a rare explanation of why terrorists wish to bring violence to Canada.
Suicide bombers are simply fighting back against the Western assault on their faith and Canadians should just learn to “take it,” he said.
“Today you have the power in your hand. The other day the suicide bomber also has power. So you use your cruise missiles and atom bombs and all that, so he uses his power. So why do you cry at that time? When you say we are fighting a war against you, so better take it then.
“They are also fighting a war against you. They are fighting their way, you are fighting your way. So let’s be happy. But only thing is, your faces are pulled down, you are scared, sitting in America and Canada. You are scared of a man sitting in the cave.”
“We are not scared of you.”
Indeed. With a military that has been emasculated through decades of neglect, a populace polluted with moral relativism, political correctness and anti-Americanism, a government that just defeated an opposition motion to deny Islamic hate monger Sheikh Al-Sudayyis entry into the country to spew his anti-semitic rhetoric, why should they be?
Hell, he’s probably in Martin’s appointment calendar under “photo-op”.
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(Update) Yesterday, Canada’s latest victim of Tom Washburn was shot in the neck in an attack in Saudi Arabia 2 weeks ago, where he was working for an oil company. He was 40. |
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Stop Calling It “Snuff”.
Theresa at Heart Of Canada;
All those site hits on Heart of Canada coming over from Wizbang. How pleasant. Perhaps people coming here will get some perspective on why they shouldn’t watch, link to, or upload the snuff video of Nick Berg’s murder.
It’s interesting that people think watching the video or enabling others to watch it protects their freedom. You know, just because you’re free to do something doesn’t mean you should do it. You have the freedom to engage in ethical decision making and personal restraint, too, and doing so in no way compromises your freedom. In fact, deciding not to do something can be an act of freedom as much as deciding to do something might be — the freedom is in the capacity to decide. People who post the snuff video argue that everyone should have the freedom to decide on their own. Let’s explore that idea.
I couldn’t agree less.
The hosting of the video has little to do with “freedom”.
We are currently witnessing a breathtaking double standard in the media. It is not about the images. It is about the perpetrators. If it were not, there would 30 headlines about Berg in the NYT and WaPo, as there have been about prison abuse. The prison abuse story was broken in January. They reported it then, deep in their pages. There has been no new information that can be revealed by photographs, but it hasn’t stopped them from exploiting them. They weren’t concerned about the allegations of abuse, or the clamour would have started 4 months ago when the DoD announced the investigation.
It’s all about the “dirty” pictures.
a) The Berg video is not a “snuff” film. Stop minimizing its importance and misrepresenting why it was made. Snuff is created for sexual gratification. This is a taped execution, committed for political purposes, by an established group, who have take responsibility for it. Who we are at war with.
b) The argument being put forward by the media over not airing or publishing stills is shown to be lie through their endless parade of prison “porn” photographs. That the Boston Globe and others have been eager to display genuine porn and misrepresent it as American and British misconduct gives proof to that. Most of what has been released amounts to nothing more than different camera angles. This is a feeding frenzy – not responsible journalism.
c) The argument about viewers seeking the video having “honourable reasons” for seeing it is irrelevant – or equally applicable to the prison photographs. They make “prison porn” for sexual gratification too. You cannot have it both ways.
d) Dignity in death. There was no dignity in Nick Berg’s death. None was intended. He was a political sacrifice. Hiding that truth, attempting to create dignity where there is only barbarism and subhumanity is dangerous and naive.
If this were a single, isolated murder by an outraged lover or sadistic serial killer, the argument not to show the video would be sound.
In this case, it is not. This is the face of our enemy and we need to see it.
Religion Of Demolition
Governor Ahmed Sani of Zamfara State, has ordered the demolition of all churches in the state, as he launched the second phase of his Sharia project yesterday.
Speaking at the launch in Gusau, the state capital, Governor Sani disclosed that time was ripe for full implementation of the programme as enshrined in the Holy Quran.
He added that his government would soon embark on demolition of all places of worship of unbelievers in the state, in line with Islamic injunction to fight them wherever they are found.
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Nigeria is constitutionally a secular state, but the Governer has been instituting Sharia law since 2000. Other states are following suit. |
Governor Sani also made the retention of a long beard a condition for securing juicy contracts from the state government.
Separated At Birth
Which Celebrity Guinea Pig Are You?
The Peruvian
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The Sheltie
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The Baldwin
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Heh.
(Today’s gratuitous Baldwin bashing is a Traffic Jam special.)
Belmont Club
The End of the Beginning
Fascinating stuff. Wretchard pays attention to the strongly worded sanctions against Syria, in the context of the Rumsfeld visit to Iraq. It involves Defenselink
observations about the travel details – the use of the “National Airborne Command Center, a modified Boeing 747 jet designed to serve as a survivable mobile command center in a national emergency.
(Speculation alert) It may be that Rumsfeld and Myers were considering an important decision specifically relating to Iraq, one already put forward by Abizaid but requiring an independent assessment, one that required them to stay in touch with the President jointly through the E-4B. The political storm over prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib and, to a lesser extent the decapitation of Nick Berg, has effaced the really important story in the Iraqi campaign: the US has just beaten back a major counteroffensive by Syria and Iran. Regionally, anticoalition forces mounted major attacks on the Jordanian secret service (using gas) and against targets in Saudi Arabia (a car bomb attack against the Saudi security apparatus). Within Iraq, simultaneous attacks were launched in April from both the Sunni and Shi’ite lines of departure. While both inflicted some damage, neither stroke has come close to seriously hurting the US position. It would be natural and not in the least surprising, if Rumsfeld and Myers were not considering what the American riposte should be.
Study In Contrast
And the Democrats let him get away.
“Most Democrats and Republicans, including President Bush and Sen. Kerry, agree that we must successfully finish what we have started in Iraq. Now is the time for all who share that goal to make our agreement publicly clear, to stress what unites us. Many argue that we can only rectify the wrongs done in the Iraqi prisons if Donald Rumsfeld resigns. I disagree. Unless there is clear evidence connecting him to the wrongdoing, it is neither sensible nor fair to force the resignation of the secretary of defense, who clearly retains the confidence of the commander in chief, in the midst of a war. I have yet to see such evidence. Secretary Rumsfeld’s removal would delight foreign and domestic opponents of America’s presence in Iraq.”
And this from John Kerry’s left-hand man;
Shamefully we now learn that Saddam’s torture chambers reopened under new management, U.S. management.”
How much less “polarized” and how much more secure would America (and arguably, Iraq) be today, had Joe Lieberman been the presumtive nominee? Americans would have had a sane and rational choice to make between two serious men, who understand that there is a fundamental difference between torture practiced as state policy and torture practiced as punishable criminal activity.
Ted Kennedy cannot tell the difference. And in not officially distancing himself from the elder senator and denouncing his statement, John Kerry is revealing that, at his core, he is still the man who came back from Vietnam to falsely accuse those he served with of committing criminal acts, before Congress, to serve his own political ends.
Nick Berg, Updated?
James has been following a new development…
ABC news:
But in the wake of Berg’s gruesome murder, it becomes a stranger than fiction coincidence – an American who inadvertently gave away his computer password to one notorious al Qaeda operative is later murdered by another notorious al Qaeda operative.
Paul, at Wizbang broke the story
CNN:
WEST CHESTER, Pennsylvania (CNN) — When Nicholas Berg took an
Oklahoma bus to a remote college campus a few years ago, the American recently beheaded by terrorists allowed a man with terrorist connections to use his laptop computer, according to his father.
Government sources told CNN that the encounter involved an acquaintance of Zacarias Moussaoui — the only person publicly charged in the United States in connection with the September 11, 2001, terror attacks.