I can't believe this....

On the other hand, I can.

Jyllands-Posten, a Danish newspaper that dared print a series of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammed, has issued an apology.

The mere production of an image that proports to depict the prophet is an affront, so Muslims say, to Islam.

After standing its ground for months, the paper broke to threats of terrorism and DoS attacks and issued an apology.

I saw the cartoons. While I am certain many Muslims would take offence, let me propose the following question:

Were there terrorist threats over "Piss Christ" (a work of... ahem... "art" that featured a crucifix in a jar of urine).

[crickets chirping]

Was there a public apology from the artist, or the venues that displayed it?

[crickets chirping]

Such behavior -- being overly compensatory to Muslims re-inforces the radical Muslim idea that all non-Muslims are compelled by Allah to bow to Islam. In doing this, we feed the beast that is Radical Islam.

If Muslims want to come to our countries and live by them, they need to respect our rules. Otherwise (and fully understand that "otherwise" is the key term here before you go off on a PC tangent), their presence should be construed as an act of hostility... jihad .... war.

If we don't act accordingly, we will be living by their rules in time. And they know this. It is critical to their strategy. Read their documents and listen to their rhetoric. It's all layed out pretty plainly.

Fortunately, the Danish Government, so far, refuses to capitulate.

Good for them.

These people have truly lost it

I keep wondering when these guys will run smack dab into reality.

Well, they do, but they keep insisting that it's all Bush and Rove. These people have spent far too much time watching movies and playing video games.

This thread is something else. There are lots of good comments. It concerns a Daily KOS thread, and some MSM reporters' insinuations, claims, whatever ... that Bush and Rove are behind the latest Bin Laden tape.

There are lots of good comments. Here's a telling one...

Re: Daily Kos'ers - White House Trotting Out Osama For Political
Gain (Score: 1)by Jester on Thursday, 19 January 2006 (13:33:46) EST
I mentioned a while back that I signed up and got a user name and password on dailykos. I posted under the name Viper mostly on the Alito confirmation. I was polite, asked very legitimate questions of the comments left by the moonbats. The only responses I recieved in return were name calling and I was even called a "party shill" by Hunter, a major contributor there.Within 15 minutes my comments and account were deleted.Hows that for free speech? I find that very ironic coming from a group who goes on and on about liberty and civil rights.

Nope, can't have any acoustic padding in that echo chamber. Self-destruction continues unabated.

Buck Fin Laden

thatisall

Draining the swamp

When we started this war on terror, one of Bush's big points was that we have to "Drain the Swamp". He was talking about rogue/weak states that allow an environment conducive to strong terrorist organizational development -- much like a warm, moist agar dish is conducive to growing mold/bacteria/yeast.

This is a good and necessary first step. Such states amount to the covered petri dish that protects the agar and the developing organisms.

But the actual agar is money, and oil means lots of it. And our dependence on foriegn oil means we are actually pouring the very agar these organisms need all over the places where they are most densely populated.

Tom Bevan at RealClearPolitics hits the nail on the head with this article.

Would Iran be nearly as difficult a problem if their oil production didn't make up so much of the World Oil Market? Nope. They'd have all the leverage of a wet noodle if it weren't for that.

Our big energy giants have got to get serious -- almost in a panicked way, about not only reducing but ENDING our reliance on foriegn oil -- which basically means coming up with alternate energy sources. That would deal a killer blow to the terrorist element -- and make international politics a lot less messy as well.

Wishful thinking? I don't know. I have a lot of faith in humanity. It's ingenuity time.

The Hillary Plantation Flap

I hate to come out at all on her side on this one, but frankly -- her words aren't outrageous.

There is one reason to be outraged, for sure. But if we're up in arms that she used the word "Plantation" in front of a black audience -- well big fat hairy deal. Free speech and all.

Of course, I'm miffed because I believe the comparison is unwarranted, a huge over-reach... probably even an outright lie. But she's entitled to her opinion, and she's entitled to express it. Let's debate on the merits of the arguments, not the semantics.

The only outrage I feel is the double-standard. A democrat uses words like this, and they're just identifying with the people. A republican uses it, and it proves how racist he is.

Calling Hillary "racist" is stooping to their level. Knock it off, will ya? It only hurts our position.

Arguing over the merits of what she said -- we win hands down. Knock of the Ted Kennedy tactics.

I've been tagged

First let me say I've not been quite the blogger I used to be lately due to my life getting busier in general. I'm going to have to come up with a different routine that gives me more time to comment on stuff I read.

In the mean time, and on a lighter note, I've been tagged by Daniel with the following .... survey.

1. Four jobs you've had in your life: construction worker, cafeteria/fast food worker, used record store manager, email server group team lead (for a major university)

2. Four movies you could watch over and over: The Lord of the Rings, Open Range, A Christmas Carol, Undercover Brother (not all-inclusive -- but I don't generally like watching movies over and over, either)

3. Four places you've lived: Santee, CA, Los Angeles, Ca, Brownsburg, IN, rural Missouri (certainly not all-inclusive)

4. Four TV shows you love to watch: The Weather Channel... um... I'm really not a regular TV show watcher. We watch a lot of those home makeover shows. TLC/Discovery type stuff. Don't get me wrong, I watch TV, but I'm not particulary hooked on any particular programs.

Four websites you visit daily: The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiller, RealClearPolitics, BBC News, Google

6. Four of your favorite foods: So hard to pick just four.... Steak, a good thick beef stew (in the fall/winter), dark chocolate, jumblaya

7. Four places you'd rather be: Anywhere in the Rocky Mountains, a tropical island beach, somewhere where you get more snow in the winter, or overlooking a rocky coastal bluff with lots of crashing waves.

8. Four albums you can't live without: now this is a really tough one. Crosby, Stills, & Nash Box Set would probably be #1. John Denver's Rocky Mountain High. Jerry Garcia Band JGB. And... oh, man, I don't know.... just so I'd have a woman's voice, Bonnie Raitt's Give It Up.

But that's really not a fair question :-)

Global Warming Meltdown

Get this... I just ran across this article on BBC...

It starts out like this:

Scientists in Germany have discovered that ordinary plants produce significant amounts of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas which helps trap the sun's energy in the atmosphere.

Time to wipe out the rainforests. They're warming the earth!!!!!

To their amazement, the scientists found that all the textbooks written on the biochemistry of plants had apparently overlooked the fact that methane is produced by a range of plants even when there is plenty of oxygen.

Are these some of the textbooks Global Warming models are based on?

"Until we know how this process works it is really unwise to come to any conclusions."

Hmmm... where have I heard that before? ... Perhaps from the EEEEVil United States at the UN? Isn't that what Chimpy McBushHitler and his Minions have said?

As the Global Warming Believers are fond of retorting in response when reasonable people argue thus, "wouldn't it be better to err on the side of caution?" ???? :-) :-) :-) ROTFL

In fact, of course, trees are neither good nor bad. They are just there, and if they are producing methane now they always have been in natural conditions.

In fact, humans are neither good nor bad, they are just there. We are just doing what humans do under natural conditions.

The study highlights, however, the extreme complexity of the relationship between the biological processes of the Earth and the chemistry of our atmosphere - and how much there is yet to discover.

Wow. Hey, Kyoto fans, are you listening????

Good article on the Alito hearings so far

Dems Fumble, Alito Scores

Calmly, concisely and in a rumpled, everyman manner, Alito tackled the Democrats' most hostile questions. He had help from Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, who took turns praising him and feeding him leading questions so he could put his actions in a favorable light. But it was his responses to hostile charges by Dems where we glimpsed his conservative and fair legal mind and a measure of humility so lacking in his interrogators.

There is a lot of talk about the religious right -- here we have an example of how the religious left works. They are so convinced that Progressivism is The Way they act just like their religious right counterparts. God is on their side. They are blind to all else.

Then there's this wonderfully summed up tidbit:

While Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) tried to portray his rulings as evidence of a sweeping anti-liberty philosophy, Alito kept coming back to the facts of each case. If nothing else, the hearing illustrated how political ideologues differ from good judges. The former start with the result they want and ignore the facts, while judges like Alito apply the law to facts to reach a just conclusion.

And this near the end is almost embarrassingly easy slam:

You know Dems are in trouble when Kennedy takes the lead on ethics issues.

Go read the whole thing. There's more, and it's well reasoned and well written.

How does this man keep getting elected?

Michelle Malkin on Kennedy on Alito.

This is how the blogosphere is changing how easily America is led by the nose. No longer can claims like this be made in a vacuum, and they are quickly exposed.

It's really pissing the Left and their allies in the press off.

Government in General

"If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself."

-- James Madison, Federalist 51

Yet another excellent, concise quote

One of America's booming businesses is the indignation industry that manufactures the synthetic outrage needed to fuel identity politics.

--- George Will

Somebody came up with the right words for something I've thought for a long time:

When peace stands for surrender, fear, loss of dignity and freedom, it is no longer peace. It's suicide.

--- Oriana Fallaci

Mark Steyn's latest is a must read

This guy is spot on so many things in this article I can't even begin to summarize:

It's the Demography, Stupid

This hardly begins to address the scope of the article, but this little tidbit was very well put:

Radical Islam is what multiculturalism has been waiting for all along. In "The Survival of Culture," I quoted the eminent British barrister Helena Kennedy, Queen's Counsel. Shortly after September 11, Baroness Kennedy argued on a BBC show that it was too easy to disparage "Islamic fundamentalists." "We as Western liberals too often are fundamentalist ourselves," she complained. "We don't look at our own fundamentalisms."

Well, said the interviewer, what exactly would those Western liberal fundamentalisms be? "One of the things that we are too ready to insist upon is that we are the tolerant people and that the intolerance is something that belongs to other countries like Islam. And I'm not sure that's true."

Hmm. Lady Kennedy was arguing that our tolerance of our own tolerance is making us intolerant of other people's intolerance, which is intolerable. And, unlikely as it sounds, this has now become the highest, most rarefied form of multiculturalism. So you're nice to gays and the Inuit? Big deal. Anyone can be tolerant of fellows like that, but tolerance of intolerance gives an even more intense frisson of pleasure to the multiculti masochists.

Really. Go read. It's ... a Whittle-esqe chataqua. (That's high praise coming from me, Mark).