This amount of arrogance, the sheer impardonable pretension, is bound to be popular.
I'd never seen Harry S Truman's signature before. Here is a man worthy of "the buck stops here". Bold, and incisive, yet also with an artistic side: his signature is enjoyable to look at. It flows, as if looking at it, we get to watch it being created.
But even more than how a man signs his name, where he puts it is the key to knowing him.
America needs you, Harry.
And happy Birthday, Israel.
w/t: Yid With Lid
Treacher quotes a source:
Saw a clip from the tape. Reason we can't release it is because statements Obama said to rile audience up during toast. He congratulates Khalidi for his work saying "Israel has no God-given right to occupy Palestine" plus there's been "genocide against the Palestinian people by Israelis."Alleging genocide may go over well at going away parties for Jew-hating friends, but it doesn't play well in Tampa. Or in anywhere else in the United States.It would be really controversial if it got out. That's why they will not even let a transcript get out.
It has been known since April that the LA Times had a videotape (or recording) of Barack Obama, Bill Ayers, and Bernadine Dohrn at a party for Jew-hater Rashid Khalidi. The Times story said
First the Times refused to release the tape because they said they didn't want to unduly influence the election.At Khalidi’s going-away party in 2003, the scholar lavished praise on Obama, telling the mostly Palestinian American crowd that the state senator deserved their help in winning a U.S. Senate seat. “You will not have a better senator under any circumstances,” Khalidi said.
The event was videotaped, and a copy of the tape was obtained by The Times.
Iowahawk hosts another Dear Barry advice column. In this installment, we find Very Barry advice on getting along with the neighbors, how to hide your lifestyle from your sweetheart, and what to do when your spouse has the social grace of a gnu.
Frank J welcomes us back from Memorial Day, and reports success and glory found in punching some hippies. Catching up on the Hillary-Barack race, he compliments Hillary on the excellent restraint she showed in not making a direct death threat against Senator Obama. One has to admire skill where he finds it. Not to dwell on the negative, Frank then rejoices about the wonderful things we get with a McCain campaign.
Ace of Spades notes that Senator Obama claimed his uncle helped liberate Auschwitz. The problem is, of course, that Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviets. And we also know that Obama's mother was an only child. Therefore, the only Obama uncle who could have helped liberate Auschwitz (or anywhere else) was his father's brother. But Kenya didn't fight in WWII. Perhaps Obama meant his grandfather, who apparently served under Patton in the war. Patton liberated Buchenwald. But no one's ever heard of Buchenwald, so let's just say Auschwitz.
[Update 5:50PM: it was his mother's uncle, his great-uncle, who served under Patton, and that's of whom he was speaking. ]
While the bullets struck his body, Liviu Librescu held closed the doors to his classrom so that the young people in his charge could escape. His was the ultimate virtue, offering his own life to save others.
w/t Jeff Emanuel
Rafael Medoff at NRO notes that the State Department purposefully watered down a report on human rights abuses, especially in China, North Korea, and:Now it is the Palestinian Authority’s turn to benefit from the State Department’s excessive generosity. On March 13, State released an 84-page report [PDF] on “Contemporary Global Anti-Semitism.” While describing anti-Semitic incidents in various countries around the world, the report was oddly reticent when it came to the territories controlled by the Palestinian Authority.
Searching the report, I could find scarce mention of Palestine, and yet by all accounts this is the region of the world in which enmity for Jews and Israel is at its sharpest. Could this possibly be part of an effort to appease Mahmoud Abbas, in preparation for his May visit to the White House? After all, Abbas is not just a noted Jew-hater, he got a Soviet Phd in Jew hating.
President Bush wants to achieve something in his final days in office: peace in Palestine. To achieve that goal, he appears willing to overlook not only past sins, but current ones as well. For instance, in the wake of the murder of eight rabbinical students, Israeli group Palestinian Media Watch says that the official Palestinian Authority daily newspaper (under Mahmoud Abbas' control)
... describes the murderer of eight yeshiva students in Jerusalem as a "groom" and his burial as his "wedding celebration." The story in Mahmoud Abbas's Al Hayat Al Jadida goes on to evoke the neighborhood Jabal Mukaber's "week of anticipation... preparing themselves for the wedding procession."Until, and not before, the PLO. Dr. Mahmoud Abbas, and the leadership of the Palestinian Authority renounce acts of violence by civilians against civilians to achieve political ends, and acknowledge Israel's right to exist, they should not be allowed to set foot on American soil, and a fortiori, should not receive the public relations benefit from being seen hugging and shaking hands with the President of these United States.
The term "wedding" is the expression commonly used in PA society, and in PA schoolbooks as well, to describe the death of Shahids - Martyrs for Allah. According to Islamic tradition, they will wed the 72 Dark- Eyed Maidens (Virgins) of Paradise. [emphasis PMW]
You want hate crime? This is a hate crime. Palestinians cheer a massacre at a Jewish school. Eight students were killed, 35 others injured. The gunman, a Muslim and supporter of Hamas, was killed by a an off-duty Israeli Army officer who lived nearby.
The jihadist hate group Hamas probably planned the attack, and certainly praised it afterward. This is their modus operandi: stir up hatred and praise terrorism, lob bombs at the Israelis, and then become outraged when they retaliate on poor widdle Hamas. It's possible that Hamas didn't actually get involved in the attack until it was clear that it was popular with the Palestinians, at which time they opportunistically and cynically claimed credit.
Like the attack at Norris Hall at Virginia Tech in 2007, there was a Jewish hero. Unlike Professor Librescu, trapped in a gun-free zone, this hero was armed and stopped the killer dead.
Now that's a cause for celebration.
Is the problem with the world that we have too many people?
Many liberals would be surprised that there is even a question: population should be reduced to medieval levels to fix everything from African Hunger to Global Warming. But rather than battle that particular straw man, let me restate my counterthesis by positing rather weakly that many of our problems, to the liberal way of thinking, are caused by overpopulation.
Assuming arguendo that all (or most) of the world's problems are caused by having too many people, is the prospect of having too many people one we have to address? That is, how should we address the threat of overpopulation?
Hopefully all of the answers to that will involve attrition this time, not mass slaughter as they did in the 20th century. Now, that wasn't fair. Sorry. Just because every Communist who has ever gained power has been a world-class mass murderer doesn't mean that the next one will be. And that all communists are liberals doesn't imply that all liberals are communists of the mass-murdering persuasion.
But people are writing (and purchasing) books about how wonderful the planet would be without us. What if Man were to be wiped off the face of the Earth? I've thought about that. Seeing the weeds that grow in the cracks in the driveway, it seems obvious that in a few short years, they would overgrow it. The roof of the house would soon start to leak, the leaks would lead to rot, and soon trees would take root in the attic. No, wait, that's how it is now. I really should patch those holes soon.
There is an undercurrent in progressivism that holds Man to be a locust, destructively feeding on The Planet to the misfortune of all other living, and non-living, things. Obviously, if there weren't so many people the damage would not be so great. Mankind (and by unavoidable extension, individual people) are parasites, an unpleasant blight on an otherwise perfect world.
But even without considering the damage to the planet, overpopulation (and of the "wrong" type of people) has been the left's bogeyman since Margaret Sanger founded Planned Parenthood to do something about it. The efforts continued, branching from the eugenics movement to encompass the horrors of World War II. And it continues unabated.
According to a 1994 study at the site dieoff.org (yes, really), "U.S. agricultural productivity is already unsustainable". That quote is, fortunately, not supported very well by the study. A key logical error interposed itself, wherein the study notes that population growth is primarily due to immigration, but concludes that individuals must exercise family planning or the entire population will be at the mercy of nature. Nowhere in that study did they actually look at U.S. agricultural productivity due to technological advances over time, except noting in the conclusion
Given the fact that the supply of natural resources is finite and that the ability of technology to replace many of these resources is limited, we are left with the necessity of controlling population numbers. Certainly, diminishing consumption levels by stringent conservation programs will help slow depletion. But individual responsibility on the part of men and women to control family size is vital to control population numbers and maintain a high standard of living, otherwise the harsh realities of nature will impose its control on the population.Another flaw in the logic employs the fallacy of Division: just because the whole population will suffer if everyone doesn't exercise "individual responsibility", that doesn't imply that anyone in particular will suffer, whether or not they choose to exercise "individual responsibility".
How can the "obvious" logic of the population control lobby be wrong? Because the resources of the planet are not a fixed pie that dwindle with each birth. The resources are whatever we can make of this planet - or solar system - and it takes the work of human beings to transform raw materials and energy into useful resources. Humans are not a liability, but a resource that we need!Population growth is only a problem if your basis vectors are skewed. I look at population growth as the goal, and the lack of place to put the people as a problem to overcome. I want the human race to dominate the universe. That goal is unattainable at our current population numbers.
Andrew Sullivan (via Ramesh Pannuru (via IMAO)) has fallen for a Moby attack, it looks to me. SusieQ doesn't have an overtly Republican or conservative name, like "JoeBibleThumper" or "NukeTheWhales", but that's about the only Moby Point she missed in the FrontPageMag comment Sullivan reposted.
I was very reluctant to write this letter because it is so negative, but I've reached the point in which I can no longer stay silent. With your last column, I've decided to stop reading WorldNetDaily. That fact probably means nothing to you since I've never been able to support you financially. But it means something to me. For over eight years I have faithfully read WND every day. I trusted you. I believed you.I've never read WorldNetDaily, as far as I can remember, so I don't know if SusieQ is a commenter there. It's possible she could have been a long-term reader there, but if so it's very unlikely, given her later points, that she were ever anything but a troll. In fact, the entire comment has markings of having been cut and pasted from earlier work.
To suggest that the press coverage of Abu Ghraib and the reduction of "interrogation" has caused us to "lose" (support for) the war is nonsense. We are losing in Iraq because we haven't defined the enemy and we aren't there to "win." What would winning look like, anyway? This undeclared "war" was never meant to be "won," but to secure a large American presence in Iraq. And why do you and all of the other so-called "conservative" news media ignore the president of Iraq's statement that they are ready for us to leave?I'm not sure why SusieQ brought up Abu Ghraib and interrogation except as a red herring, since neither were mentioned in the article to which she responded. That is also one sign that the letter is paste-work. Playing on the ambiguity between losing support for the war and losing the war, she then presumes that we are losing in Iraq, even though she cannot even define "winning". With no definition for winning, she can no more claim defeat than victory.
"We need time and effort, particularly since the political process is facing security, economic and services pressures, as well as regional and international interference," he told reporters at a Baghdad press conference, without giving a timeframe.Maliki is not claiming that the Iraqis are "ready for us to leave", but rather, that they would get by if we did. However, if we take Mr. Maliki's words at face value and give them the interpretation SusieQ does, we're winning. Either SusieQ doesn't believe al-Maliki is correct, or she understands that victory in Iraq is in fact achieving conditions such that we can leave.
You and others who claim to stand for conservative Christians have gone down that terrible road of endorsing deception, violence and fiscal irresponsibility to justify the actions of a president (whom I voted for twice) who is not only out of touch with his country, but close to becoming our first dictator.Disregard the last clause for a moment. Is any more evidence needed before that clause to show that whatever SusieQ is, a conservative she is not? Irrespective of any particular policy position, she displays a fundamental misunderstanding of the conservative world view. The tone is all wrong. Conservative Christians do not look to FrontPageMag or "conservative media" for someone to stand for them, nor do pundits who claim to "stand for" conservative Christians last out the week. Conservatives stand for ideas, not movements or constituent groups. But she says that those who support the war in Iraq do so from loyalty to President Bush, a mistake no conservative would make.
Now the drumbeats are calling for us to "take care of" Iran next. Hitler had his scapegoat in the Jews and Bush has his in the Muslims. And my fellow Christians are happily following him down a terrible path laced with lies, torture, violence and genocide. After it is all over and the dust has cleared, what will we do when they tell the world that the Christians are now the enemy? Haven't we learned anything from history? When we condemn and entire group of people for the actions of a few, we are no better than those who have turned away from God.Out comes the Hitler card. The sheer historical ignorance, and the naivety of those who have never lived under true totalitarianism, never ceases to amaze. Even without that, however, there are several differences between the "scapegoats": the Jews never flew airplanes into German skyscrapers, never called for Germany's destruction, never said they wanted to create a Jewish nation out of the whole world, and never blew themselves up at bus stops to get on the news. They were, relatively speaking, innocent. President Bush has never called for any action against Muslims as a group, but instead always carefully and zealously distinguishes between radical Islamic terrorists and ordinary Muslims. The two situations are in wholly dissimilar.
You and the others who support the evolution of our political process into essentially a one-party system are guilty of contributing to the destruction of our beloved republic. I am so sorry that you of all people bought into this madness. I really used to enjoy reading WND, but now I've deleted it from my database because you have become like the rest of the people who claim to follow Jesus: You lust for war, violence, torture and injustice. You will say anything to justify these things, which you know go against the teachings of Jesus. Which Jesus supports these things? Not the Jesus I follow, and I have been a Bible-believing traditional conservative Christian for 24 years. Go ahead and rationalize it all you want. We all have to answer to God for our actions, and I will no longer stand with my fellow Christians and endorse this insanity because after four years, I have come to the conclusion that we were deceived right from the start."
Mankind has a certain way of finding scapegoats, a method which seems to assign blame for causes on a scale inversely proportional with the ability of the scapegoat to defend itself against the charge.
Why do we insist on assigning guilt for all troubles great and small to the bogeyman of the day? While Satan, demons, pixies, elves, gremlins, and other such creatures have often received more blame than is their due, there can be little doubt that they are involved in some of our many troubles. But we don't stop there; we take actual things and people we see in the world and assign other-worldly power to them.
Take that, jihadists.
The last bozo who tried to wipe out the Jews gave them not just a national identity, but Palestine. What will you give them, with your lust for their blood?
At Classical Values, Simon writes:
Clauzwitz [sic] says that the moral factor in war is the predominate factor. Fighting and sustaining the fighting has a moral calculus. The answer an individual gets will depend on the weight given to each component in the analysis. The weights are moral weights.
In Viet Nam and Iraq, Simon argues, the faces do not look like ours, and so the lives are deemed not as valuable, a situation he sees as deplorable racism. The Socratic reply was:
What are the moral factors in the calculus of war? Specifically, in the kind of war exemplified by World War I, II, Korea, Viet Nam, and Iraq, in which our interests are to be defended on foreign soil, such that capitulation will not lead to immediate loss of sovereignty, but will significantly increase the likelihood of that loss.The moral calculus is based on something we need not dance around: American lives are more valuable to us than other lives. It isn't race, but national loyalty. The other viewpoint is called 'transnationalism'.
It is a mistake to strawman that into "foreign lives are worthless", because we have allies and enemies, and prospective allies. The degree to which another nation is our ally is the degree to which we should value the lives of its citizens, tempered of course by the constant value of all human life.
And there is the nub of the argument: how big is the constant factor, and does that factor outweigh our 'interests'?
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, or Virginia Tech, or VaTech, is a school which goes by many names.
As we decide how to how to remember the events of April 16, 2007 at the school, it seems to me that names will be very important.
Some names, such as that of Liviu Librescu, deserve to be remembered. Others, such as that of his killer, do not.
Librescu Teaching HallEven in his final act of heroism, Librescu taught us the value of personal courage and of sacrifice. His act, and the lives of those senselessly taken, need to be memorialized. Norris Hall, the building in which the major rampage occurred, should be central to that memorial. I call on Virginia Tech to rededicate that place Librescu Teaching Hall. |
