Do the liberal media really think most people are stupid?

A quick jab at yesterday's NY Times editorial on filibusters. For background, the basic story is this: during the Clintoon years, the NY Times editorial page came out, strongly, against the use of filibusters. They condemned filibusters in the harshest terms and said they should be abolished. During the Bush administration, however, the NY Times editorial page has been lauding filibusters as the saviour of democracy. It's obvious why they have flip flopped. But here was their admission in yesterday's editorial:

A decade ago, this page expressed support for tactics that would have gone even further than the "nuclear option" in eliminating the power of the filibuster. At the time, we had vivid memories of the difficulty that Senate Republicans had given much of Bill Clinton's early agenda. But we were still wrong. To see the filibuster fully, it's obviously a good idea to have to live on both sides of it. We hope acknowledging our own error may remind some wavering Republican senators that someday they, too, will be on the other side and in need of all the protections the Senate rules can provide.

They still don't get it. It's not that they were wrong to oppose filibusters...it's that they're BIASED in when they notice the problems with filibusters. That hasn't changed.

There's maybe a subtle difference in this, but I think it's significant. When you're wrong and you admit it only when your error is being used against you, that's not being forthright. That's being tricky and manipulative. When you're wrong and you admit it at a time that exposes your error without any benefit to you, then there's some integrity involved. For example: if the NY Times were to come out, without qualification, and admit "we were wrong to spend the last 3+ years attacking Bush, especially on the war. He was right, we were wrong." But to admit to your own bias and then just say "well, now that it's working against us, we don't think it's right", that's just bullshit.

NY Times: Little Goebbels?

In today's story about the University of Colorado's investigation into Ward Churchill, the NY Times made a small but very interesting misstatement about Churchill's infamous (and barely readable) 9/11 essay. This is the essay in which Churchill defended the Islamic terrorists and tried to reason that the targets they chose were legitimate targets of war.

The NY Times describes the essay as follows:

...controversial opinions like his comparison of some victims of the Sept. 11 World Trade Center attack to Nazi technocrats....

Here's the problem with the Times' story: Churchill didn't limit his essay to SOME of the victims. Let's read the passage from his essay, which is available here

There is simply no argument to be made that the Pentagon personnel killed on September 11 fill that bill. The building and those inside comprised military targets, pure and simple. As to those in the World Trade Center . . . Well, really. Let's get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break. They formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America's global financial empire – the "mighty engine of profit" to which the military dimension of U.S. policy has always been enslaved – and they did so both willingly and knowingly. Recourse to "ignorance" – a derivative, after all, of the word "ignore" – counts as less than an excuse among this relatively well-educated elite. To the extent that any of them were unaware of the costs and consequences to others of what they were involved in – and in many cases excelling at – it was because of their absolute refusal to see. More likely, it was because they were too busy braying, incessantly and self-importantly, into their cell phones, arranging power lunches and stock transactions, each of which translated, conveniently out of sight, mind and smelling distance, into the starved and rotting flesh of infants. If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I'd really be interested in hearing about it.

NY Times, if you can show me where he said or implied that the comparison related only SOME of the victims of Islamic terror at the WTC, rather than ALL, I'll apologize right here. Otherwise, you are obligated to print a correction, stating that Churchill accused ALL of the victims at the WTC of being "little Eichmanns."

The other interesting thing about Churchill's essay is that it makes the most direct connection I've ever seen between the 9/11 Islamic terror attacks and Iraq. If we are to believe Churchill, he wrote the essay right after 9/11, well before the war against Iraq began. Churchill, time after time, justifies the 9/11 attacks as being a legitimate response to the first gulf war. Hmmm. So I guess he's one of the few leftists who don't believe that there was no connection between the war in Iraq and the war on terror! How about that.

She is not risen

Not that I intend to weigh in (pun intended) on the Schiavo issue, but a few random thoughts:

(1) Isn't it ironic that the thing that caused her to be in this state (vegetative, not Florida) was an eating disorder?
(2) Wouldn't it be interesting if she died on Easter?
(3) Am I the only one who thinks its bizarre that the Supreme Court of the US held that killing a murderer who happens to be under the age of 18 is "cruel and inhuman" but killing an innocent adult by starving them to death is beyond the purview of the court (and yes, I understand that the 8th amdt relates to punishment, but it doesn't really limit itself to criminal proceedings in the text)?

The salivating morons who make up the lynch mob prevail

Over this past weekend, the SF Chronicle ran a story about Barry Bonds, which was picked up by every major MSM outlet. The story was about grand jury testimony given by Barry Bonds' alleged girlfriend (Bonds is married). In this story, the Chronicle reported on the alleged affair and further reported the woman's testimony, which consisted (allegedly) of the (alleged) facts that she had been Bonds' mistress, he had told her that he used steroids and that he had given her large sums of money without paying tax thereon.

All of this testimony, as well as other testimony that the Chronicle was printed in the past on the matter, came from a grand jury proceeding which was supposed to be secret. There was no cross examination, no fact checking...nothing but the statements of a person who may or may not have an agenda, a bad memory or some other evil intent.

Isn't it ironic, don't you think, that the old media, the same ones who called bloggers "[t]he salivating morons who make up the lynch mob" due to the alleged lack of control in blog reporting, don't hesitate for a second to form their own lynch mobs, going so far as to use illegally obtained secret information and publish it (see, e.g., the Apple case mentioned elsewhere here).

Let's remember that the Chronicle (and the rest of the old media) published these smears against Bonds without concern for whether the secret information was even accurate. It wouldn't be the first time someone lied during grand jury testimony.

Lynch mob, indeed.

Right to Lie

I haven't much of an opinion on the Schiavo case, but I do have an opinion on the wording of this AP story from today:

Schiavo's husband, Michael Schiavo, said he was outraged that lawmakers and the president were intervening in the contentious right-to-die battle. He has fought for years with his wife's parents over whether she should be permitted to die or kept alive through the feeding tube.

Starving her to death is permitting her to die? Maybe this is a fine line, but doesn't "permitting" imply that her natural inclination would be to die and that the feeding is keeping her from that? If that's the case, then aren't we all in the same position, which would mean that starving someone to death would not be murder?

The Broken Record of San Francisco Extremism

SEE UPDATE BELOW

San Francisco Anti Democracy Rally, March 19, 2005

This is a picture from today's anti-democracy protest in San Francisco.

While I can't say that I'm surprised, I do have to point out something. The same people who hit the streets so often in San Francisco (the ANSWER and MoreOn puppets) to scream their empty slogans against the United States, George Bush, Israel and capitalism didn't ever hit the streets in support of Iraqis and Afghanis voting, Lebanese shaking off Syrian oppression, Islamic terrorism generally (did we ever see one protest in San Francisco against the al Qaeda attacks on the United States? Against the beheadings? Against the terror attacks against Iraqis?), nor do they ever hit the streets to protest against things like genocide in Darfur or anti-Jewish terrorism by Islamic forces.

This is not patriotic dissent.

This is nothing more than self loathing, hate and extremism of the left, something that has, unfortunately, become the hallmark of the San Francisco Bay Area.

If these people were to hit the street for any of the above, I'd say "ok, there's some balance there. The dissent is idealistic, but it's also in the spirit of this country's principles."

What is going on under the guise of ANSWER and MoreOn (and San Francisco politics generally) is closer to treason or sedition than an actual concern for upholding the principles of this country. Hitting the streets, time after time, to oppose everything that the country does while ignoring the tremendous positive changes is NOT dissent. For example, the same people who were flooding into Iraq to serve as "human shields" in favor of Saddam against the US military were curiously absent from Iraq when it came time to protect from Islamic terrorists those Iraqis who wanted to vote earlier this year. Likewise, we see the idiotic terror supporters like Rachael "Pancake" Corrie defend Palestinian terror but they don't seem to be able to have an interest in trying to defend Israelis from Palestinian terrorist attacks. That's a "peace activist?"

And now let's see if we can count the hateful slogans...
Yes, there's the old favorite "Bush Lies, blah blah dies"
And there's the pat anti-Israel poster...
And there's something about social security (when someone can explain what that has to do with war...)
There's one that labels Bush a terrorist (hmmm...too bad these SF scumbags don't bother to protest against the real terrorists...)

Come on, people of San Francisco. This isn't progressive thought. This is coddling our enemies and repeating totally vapid slogans of hate. This is just the left wing equivalent of a KKK rally.

UPDATE
To put an exclamation point on this topic, compare the following. Quotes from the San Francisco anti-democracy protest:
"'This city can be looked down on for being so left-wing, and that's unfortunate,' he said. 'People here just aren't as afraid as they are in the rest of the country.' "
AFRAID OF WHAT? Left wing protests in the streets of San Francisco have WHAT element of danger? That you may get called a Republican? I'd say that the people of San Francisco in these protests are among the biggest cowards on earth. They spew slogans in support of terror while they are about as insulated as anyone on the planet from the actual effects of what they are supporting.

Or this example of San Franciso lunacy:
"Ruth Antwerp of Ukiah wore a George W. Bush mask and carried a large "to- do" list. It read: "1. Let 9/11 happen. 2. Devastate Iraq. 3. Destroy Social Security." The first two items had red check marks next to them.

"I'm doing everything I know to do to change my country's foreign policy, " Antwerp said. "It's just a small part of what I can do to resist and protest.'"

Now compare what the San Francisco extremist hatemongers were saying to what the Iraqis are saying:

To may outsiders, like those who protested last year, who will protest today. This was a fools errand, it brought nothing but death and destruction. I am sheltered in Iraq, but I know how the world feels, how people have come to either love or hate Bush, as though heis the emobdiement of this war. As though this war is part of Bush, they forget the over twenty million Iraqis, they forget the Middle Easterners, they forget the average person on the street, the average man with the average dream.

Ask him if it was worth it. Ask him what is different. Ask him if he would go through it again, go ahead ask him, ask me, many of you have.

Now I answer you, I answer you on behalf of myself, and my countrymen. I dont care what your news tells you, what your television and newspapers say, this is how we feel. Despite all that has happened. Despite all the hurt, the pain, blood, sweat and tears. These two years have given us hope we never had.

Before March 20, 2003, we were in a dungeon. We did not see the light. Saddam Hussain was crushing Iraq's spirit slowly, we longed for his end, but knew we could not challenge him, or his diabolical seed who would no doubt follow him and continue his generation of hell on Earth.

Since then, we now have hope. Hope is not a tangible thing, but it is something, it is more than being blinded by darkness, by being stuck in a mental pit without any future.

Hope has been the greatest product of the last two years. No doubt, many have died, many have died by accident or due to crimes. But their sacrifices are not, and will not be for nothing. I refuse to let it be, and my countrymen stand with me.

Our cities are smoking, our graveyards full, and terrorists in our midst. But we are not defeated. We are not down, we are not regretful. We are not going to surrender. For all that the two years have brought, the greatest thign they have given us is a future, and a view of the finish line.

Iraqis see the finish line, the finish line of freedom and democracy and a functioning nation. We can smell it, taste it, and like a sprinter, one who has broken his legs, but who has a heart full of passion, we will crawl there no matter what the cost. No matter what we must endure, we have realized what we can become, and that is the biggest result of the last two years.

Noone can take that from us. Not the terrorists, not those who want to question the good of the removal of Saddam, not those who want to reduce our glory for politics, none.

We have been brought from darkness to light. And not only has the future been made better for Iraq, but the martyrs of our nation, their blood is watering the roots of democracy across the world. We are watching our neighbors come closer to the light, and this only pushes us more, and makes us stronger in our burning desire to reach the finish line, to realize the dream that our people have had for so long.

No, we will not give up, and we will not say that the last two years were a waste. They for all their trouble have been momentus. They for us, have been a turning point in history. Whether or not you agree, this is how it looks from Iraq.

(from Democracy in Iraq)

Amen. And to you hateful San Francisco extremists who couldn't even contemplate the courage of the Iraqis, I can only hope that you will one day suffer the consequences of your embrace of terror. I'm ashamed to be of the same citizenship as you worthless pieces of garbage.

Institutional eye closing and ear plugging...

Today's NY Times' editorial is the journalistic equivalent of a child jamming his fingers in his ears, closing his eyes and screaming "I CAN'T HEAR YOU, I CAN'T HEAR YOU!" I'll post the text of the editorial below and not even bother with pointing out the tremendous omissions (such as the election in Afghanistan or Libya giving up its nuke program), the pathetic misdirections (trying to claim that the Lebanese revolt against decades of Syrian opposition was a coincidence, along with the coincidences of Libya, Afghanistan, the Palestinian territories, Egypt, et. al., really caused by the assassination of Hariri...funny how other assassinations, such as that of Bashir Gemayel, never caused the Lebanese to rise up against Syria) and the utter reliance on documented conspiracy theory nonsense (such as the car "riddled with bullets" when the pictures that are available show no such thing). I suppose this is to be expected from the Times, but the extent of their bitter refusal to consider and acknowledge what is obvious (that the war set into motion a revolutionary shift towards democracy in the Middle East) so harms their credibility. Other than Michael Moore, John Kerry and a bunch of other committed leftists, does anyone do anything other than laugh at the NY Times these days?

I truly want to read the Times. I know it's a liberal paper and I want to see their point of view, but when they are so filled with hate that it blinds them to even the basic elements of balance and integrity, I'm afraid that they leave all of us with one fewer source of alternative viewpoints.

March 18, 2005
EDITORIAL
Two Years Later
The invasion of Iraq, which began two
years ago this weekend, was a world-changing event. We can see many of the
consequences already. The good ones, so far, exist mainly as hopes and are fewer
than the bad ones, some of which are all too concrete. One of the few positive
domestic consequences of the war has been the nation's determination - despite
obstruction from the White House and its supporters - to honor the memory of
each American man and woman who has died in Iraq. The administration has been
shockingly callous about the tens of thousands of Iraqi victims, whom ordinary
Americans cannot count let alone name.
The Real Reasons
The Bush
administration was famously flexible in explaining why it invaded Iraq, and the
most important reason, in the minds of Americans and in the arguments made by
American diplomats, turned out to be wrong. There were no weapons of mass
destruction to destroy. Worse, the specialized machinery and highly lethal
conventional weaponry that Saddam Hussein did control was looted during the
invasion and is now very likely in the hands of terrorists. As James Glanz and
William Broad reported in The Times, among the things missing is high-precision
equipment capable of making parts for nuclear arms. The WMD argument was not
only wrong, but the invasion might have also created a new threat.
However,
there was another theory behind the invasion. Mr. Bush might have been slow to
articulate it, but other prominent officials were saying early on that
overthrowing Saddam Hussein would shake up the hidebound, undemocratic regimes
in the Middle East and free the natural democratic impulses of Arab and Islamic
people. This rationale may still hold up. Iraqi and Afghani voters marching
stolidly to the polls was by far the most hopeful image in the past two
years.
There is an endless list of qualifications. Many of the most promising
signs of change have little to do with Iraq. The peace initiatives in Israel
were made possible when Yasir Arafat died and was replaced by a braver, more
flexible leader. The new determination of the Lebanese people to throw out their
Syrian oppressors was sparked by the assassination of the Lebanese nationalist,
Rafik Hariri, not the downfall of Saddam Hussein. And in Iraq itself, the voting
largely excluded the Sunni minority, without whose cooperation Iraq will never
be anything more than a civil war battleground or a staging platform for a new
dictatorship.
With all that said, even the fiercest critic of George Bush's
foreign policy would be insane not to want these signs of hope to take root.
That would not excuse the waging of an unnecessary war on false pretences, but
it could change the course of modern history. Grieving families would find the
peace that comes with knowing that spouses, parents or children died to help
make a better world.
The Real Losses
Even with the best possible outcome,
the invasion is already costly. America's alliances, particularly those with
Europe, have been severely frayed since President Bush turned his back on the
United Nations in the fall of 2002. Even some of his early supporters, like
Spain, have edged away. Tony Blair remains the exception, mainly because of his
willingness to ignore public opinion. If there is such a thing as the European
street, anti-American feeling is strong and universal.
Things are even worse
on the Arab street. While hope for change may be rising, opinion about the
United States has never been as profoundly negative. Even under the best
circumstances, it would have been hard for the proud people of the Middle East
to acknowledge any benefit from an armed intervention by a Western power. And
the occupying forces have made themselves easy to hate with maddening
human-rights disasters. When the average Egyptian or Palestinian or Saudi thinks
about the Americans in Iraq, the image is not voters' purple-stained fingers but
the naked Iraqi prisoner at the other end of Pfc. Lynndie England's
leash.
The atrocities that occurred in prisons like Abu Ghraib were the
product of decisions that began at the very top, when the Bush administration
decided that Sept. 11 had wiped out its responsibility to abide by the rules,
including the Geneva Conventions and the American Constitution. For the United
States, one of the greatest harms from the Iraq conflict has been the
administration's willingness to define democracy down on the pretext of wartime
emergency.
Mr. Bush was not honest with the American people in the run-up to
the war. He hyped the WMD evidence abroad and played down the cost at home. The
results of last fall's election ensured that he would pay no political penalty.
But other people sit in judgment as well. Mr. Bush's determination to have his
war and his tax cuts at the same time meant masking the real price of invading
Iraq, and even now the costs are being borne mainly by overseas holders of
American debt. The international markets know this, and over the long run are
most likely to be less forgiving than American voters.
The New
Challenges
Those stains on the index fingers of proud Iraqi voters have long
faded. As Robert Worth of The Times discovered in interviews with average
citizens, an inevitable disillusionment has set in. People reasonably want to
know what comes next. More chilling, they seem to be prepared to blame competing
ethnic groups for anything that goes wrong.
Iraq's newly elected leaders must
organize a government that Shiites, Sunnis, Kurds and smaller ethnic and
religious groups feel has their best interests at heart. They must also
accomplish some practical matters - more electrical power, cleaner water, better
security - to give their constituents the confidence that things really can get
better.
The first challenge is up to the Iraqis, and so far, there are not
many signs that any group is prepared to compromise for the common good.
Americans must help with the second problem, and almost no one inside Iraq seems
to feel the infant government can survive right now without the Western
military.
It is hard to imagine a quick exit that would not make things much
worse. But at the same time, it's clear that the presence of American troops is
poisoning the situation. Under constant fire from Sunni insurgents, the soldiers
are seldom free to provide the good-will services that many would undoubtedly
like to do. Instead they stand behind barricades, terrified that the next
vehicle will be driven by a suicide bomber. The inevitable consequence is what
happened to the Italian journalist and her protectors whose car was riddled with
bullets en route to the airport. Far more often, the people inside the cars are
Iraqis.
The invasion has stirred up other dreadful side effects that must be
addressed. One is that other rogue nations watched what happened to Saddam
Hussein and not unreasonably took the lesson that the only way to keep American
forces away permanently was to acquire nuclear weapons quickly. Curbing the
international market of the most lethal weapons must be the top priority for the
White House, but it is not possible without the multilateral cooperation they
scorned before the invasion. North Korea, which any sensible person regards as a
far more deadly threat than Saddam Hussein ever was, can be kept in check only
by allies working together.
The Enduring Principles
Like a great many
Americans and most Europeans, this page opposed the invasion of Iraq. Our
reasons seem as good now as they did then. Most important is our belief that the
United States cannot work in isolation from the rest of the world. There are too
many problems, from global warming to nuclear proliferation, which can be solved
only if the major powers collaborate. Americans need both the counsel and
restraint of other world leaders. The White House has almost unthinkable power,
and the rest of the globe has the right to take a profound interest in making
sure it is exercised wisely.

Some of my best friends are fags...

A quick, very general criticism of the ruling in San Francisco yesterday that ruled the ban on gay marriages unconstitutional (under the state constitution). While I know that the ruling was made on equal protection grounds and I know that the case I'm going to compare it to was made on a totally different section of the federal constitution, I think the logic holds.

A few weeks ago, the US Supreme Court found that executing criminals under the age of 18 was cruel and unusual punishment and thus not constitutional. The court had to cobble together the backing for this, going, primarily, to foreign legal sources and the, alleged, will of many US states (that have banned such executions). This SF gay marriage decision is a perfect example of why the US Supreme Court going outside of the constitution is so dangerous. In 2000, CA voters approved a law that defined marriage as a union of a man and a woman. That law passed by over 60% of the vote. If the CA supreme court follows the logic of the US supreme court in deciding the gay marriage appeal, it's going to have to give the 2000 law a lot of weight in determing what deserves protection for discrimination. This is why I think that the liberals really screwed themselves with that child execution case. Rather than having legal protections that are set in stone, we will have a constantly changing legal landscape, changing with the mood of a majority of voters.

A Public Service Announcement

Because San Francisco liberals tend to not understand big words, I will present this public service announcement with plenty of visual aids. One of the things that has REALLY ticked me off about the left is the way that they took to the streets to protest the war and defend terror but they've been absolutely nowhere to be seen now that democracy is spreading throughout the Islamic world. This is especially true in San Francisco. One of the defenses these cretins have used, when questioned about who they were really supporting with their protests, is the wonderful slogan "dissent is patriotic!"

My public service announcement is the following: Here is patriotic, courageous dissent:


(Beirut, Lebanon, March 14, 2005)

And here is dissent that is cowardly and full of hate:


(San Francisco, 2004).

The difference, for those of you who don't quite get it, is that in the first picture, the people who are speaking out are sacrificing their lives to speak out against something that is lurking right around the corner and that could cost them their lives.

The second picture is 180 degrees from the first. The people in the picture are not actually involved in whatever conflict they are commenting on; in fact, they likely know nothing about the conflicts. They are thousands of miles away from anything that would put their lives at risk for the speech they are engaging in. They are speaking out in 100% safety. That is not only not patriotic, it's cowardly. Were they brave, they would be in the top picture, putting themselves between the Syrians and the crowd urging Syria to leave.

Tora Tora Bora

On the occasion of my brother's return to Afghanistan, I thought for a moment about one of John Kerry's slogans during the last presidential debates. He kept talking about "outsourcing" the job of hunting down bin Laden. I thought it was a silly slogan at the time (he was trying to do what liberals seem to do best-use slogans and buzzwords, rather than facts and analysis, to create opinions). Now, after the elections in Iraq and the revolutionary changes that have taken place recently throughout the Islamic world, Kerry's slogans and the Democrats' handling of terrorism are exposed for the disastrous failures that they are.

Bin Laden, while a catalyst for the 9/11 attacks, was never the beginning or end of terrorism. There was Islamic terrorism against the US well before bin Laden appeared and there will be terrorism directed against the US when bin Laden is long decomposed. Catching bin Laden would have been a nice symbolic move, but, like catching Saddam, it wouldn't have changed much of anything in the fight to minimize the effects of terror.

What counts when fighting a decentralized enemy is not catching the "leaders." What counts is, first, recognizing the threat and, second, relentlessly hunting down the second and third tier of the various groups. The leaders may be important in a number of ways, but leaders can always be replaced without much of an impact on the organization. Take an American company as an example. Boeing recently got rid of its CEO. Will that result in Boeing no longer being able to produce its products? Not in the least. Had Boeing lost a number of its upper level operational people, though, there's a good chance that there would be some serious problems with production.

President Bush is doing the right thing with this war and it may be a result of his business, rather than legal, background. Clinton and Kerry never ran a business and spent their lives in law and politics. If there's one thing I know about law, it's that lawyers think that they're the center of the universe and if it weren't for them, everything would stop. Politicians, I'm sure, are the same. So to Clinton or Kerry, it was natural for them to think that taking out the titular leader would be the key to stopping the organization. I think Bush knew that the key was not the leaders and the war was designed to disrupt the business of terror.

This all leads to the main complaint I have with the Democrats. They can drone on about "outsourcing" the hunt for bin Laden and scream that "Bush lied" from now until the end of time, but it's not going to change the terrible mistakes they made, mistakes that were directly rooted in the basic tenets of liberal policy, that allowed Islamic terror to arrive at a point where they could carry out an attack on the US like that of 9/11.

All the way back in the early 1990s, Bill Clinton had every chance to discover the threat of al Qaida, in its infancy, take the threat seriously and wipe it out. Had Clinton and the liberals taken the assassination of Rabbi Meir Kahane seriously (there were ties to al Qaida), investigated it properly and continued that investigation through the first al Qaida attack on the World Trade Center, it would have been clear that the threat was real, it was building and it was not going to be stopped by putting a few people in jail and shooting off a few cruise missiles at a tent.

What really gets me is that Kerry SHOULD have known this and he should have taken it into consideration before he pushed that simplistic Clintonian slogan about bin Laden and Tora Bora. I knew, as soon as he uttered those words, that he hadn't learned the lessons from Clinton's horrible mistakes in dealing with Islamic terror.

Tie a Yellow Ribbon...

...round the unexploded WMD...

My brother, pictured above, should be back in Afghanistan again by the time this is posted. He left earlier this week for his third tour in Afghanistan (on the heels of his second tour in Iraq over the summer). The picture above was taken when he was stationed at a former Soviet base on the border of Afghanistan (he's Air Force Special Ops, so, thanks to the miracle of flight, he's not always stationed in the exact location that he operates). This time, he's back inside Afghanistan.

While he and I have a typical brotherly relationship (i.e., emotions through name calling and threats), I post this picture as a tribute to the sacrifices he makes and in hope that he has a successful deployment and returns to his family no worse off than when he left. The sacrifices he makes (as do all American soldiers) are not insubstantial. To begin with, he's in his 18th or so year in the military and he still earns far less than he should. An entry level paralegal at the firm I work makes more than he does. But he is not in this for the money. He does what he does because he is a true American patriot and he enjoys what he does.

I have a friend who has stated, on any number of occasions, that anti-war/anti-American protesters are patriots, because, as he so simply puts it, "dissent is patriotic." Bullshit. Dissent isn't necessarily unpatriotic, but there's a big difference between some Starbucks clerk in SF heading out to Market Street to denounce Bush, America, Israel and the war and my brother, who leaves his family (including his 2 year old daughter) several times a year to go around the world and put his life on the line. To compare the two is idiotic. Dissenting may be part of the democratic process, but standing on a street in San Francisco and screaming that you hate President Bush constitutes zero sacrifice and it has absolutely nothing to do with supporting the principles or people of the United States.

I'll leave with a snippet of the last conversation I had with my brother before he got on the plane to head to Afghanistan:

Zhid: "Hey fag*, be safe out there. There was just a news report that Mullah Omar issued a release claiming to have plans to escalate attacks on Americans in Afghanistan when the winter ends."
Brother: "Good. I like it when they pop their heads out of their caves, it makes for a better target."

Good hunting.

*Yes, we call each other fags. Don't like it? Tough.

Steal This Blog

Never one to miss an opportunity to smear blogs, the NY Times* today proclaimed

Apple Can Demand Names of Bloggers, Judge Says

The story goes on to say

Judge James P. Kleinberg of the Santa Clara County Superior Court in San Jose,
Calif., said in a 13-page ruling that Apple's interest in protecting its trade
secrets outweighed the public's right to information about Apple and the right
of bloggers to disseminate that.

Notice that the Times is focusing on "the right of bloggers." Once again, the NY Times goes out of its way, playing fast and loose with facts, to cast blogs as being a less legitimate source of news than, say, a newspaper. It's subtle, but it's there.

The facts, of course, are at odds with the NY Times' portrayal of the judge's decision. What the judge decided was that the information posted on the websites consisted of illegally obtained trade secrets and that no one, be he a blogger or a NY Times reporter, has a right to disseminate such information. The judge NEVER reached the question of whether a blogger would have the same rights as a NY Times reporter.

It's pretty clear from the decision that had the entity disclosing the information been the NY Times, it, too, would have been compelled to disclose the identity of the source(s).

So the headline is misleading.

The story itself is less misleading, as it admits that the judge never reached the question of whether a blogger is a journalist, but the fact that this case involved a blog really was not relevant to the decision and the story should have focused on the real issue (theft and dissemination of trade secrets).

There's also a factual problem with the headline. The persons who stole the information from Apple were not, as far as anyone knows, bloggers. They were, from all indications, Apple employees. The bloggers, who were not parties to the litigation, were seeking protection against having to disclose the identities of the source of the ill-gotten information. The bloggers were named as non-party movants and Apple, as well as anyone else who reads the decision, can see who the bloggers are.

I think this was an intentional error on the part of the Times, as it ties the illegal activity (theft of trade secrets) to the source of all evil in the Times' world (bloggers). The truth, of course, is that the bloggers weren't the ones who stole the information from Apple.

*Remember, when I refer to the NY Times, I use it as a proxy for the entire liberal mainstream media. You can replace the NY Times with CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, the LA Times, the SF Chronicle, etc.

UPDATE: 3/19/05

Credit the Times for seeing the obvious. I sent them a link to this story and pointed out the error and a few days later, they made the following correction at the end of the story in the online edition:

Correction: March 17, 2005, Thursday:
A headline in Business Day on
Saturday about a judge's ruling on information about Apple Computer on three Web
sites misstated the scope of the decision. The judge said Apple had the right to
subpoena the names of sources and documents related to confidential company
information published on the Web sites, not the names of publishers or
bloggers.

How about a nice game of chess?

Following up on yesterday's post, the oh-so-predictable liberal media (NY Times and SF Chronicle, among others) lost no time in whipping out the de rigeur editorial on terrorists and access to guns. The Chron's editorial was a beaut:

Guns + terrorists = trouble
-
Wednesday, March 9, 2005


PRESIDENT BUSH suggested Tuesday that his aggressive foreign policy was helping protect the U.S. from terrorism -- reiterating his theme that it's better to fight them there than here.

Meanwhile, a new Government Accounting Office report this week found that dozens of terror suspects on federal watch lists were allowed to buy firearms legally in the United States last year.

It's time for the Bush administration and Congress to connect the dots. This ... is ... a ... danger.

Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., plans to introduce legislation that would help investigators maintain a paper trail on suspected terrorist gun purchases by requiring that records of such sales be kept for 10 years. Incredibly, Congress last year voted to destroy such records within 24 hours -- a bow to the gun lobby's concern about privacy.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., announced Tuesday that she would co- sponsor Lautenberg's bill as well as introduce legislation to reinstate the ban on military-style assault weapons. She also expressed concern about the "significant national security threat" of powerful .50-caliber rifles that are designed to take out airplanes, tanks, bunkers, fuel stations and communications centers.

If the National Rifle Association tries to resist such sensible measures by Lautenberg and Feinstein, Bush can invoke one of his favorite refrains about terrorism. "You're either with us ... or your against us."

The NY Times was a bit more hysterical (if one can believe that):

March 9, 2005
EDITORIAL
Terror Suspects' Right to Bear Arms

he good news for Americans concerned about post-9/11 preparedness is that 58 potential gun buyers were flagged in a nine-month period last year as positive matches on a federal watch list of terrorism suspects. The bad news is that 47 of them were cleared to go ahead anyway and buy assault rifles, ammunition or whatever else was on their firearms shopping list. Federal agents could only watch as the crazy quilt of loopholes that passes for gun control in this country enabled dozens of suspects to stock their personal or group armories.

Welcome to the new world of homeland security, where all the national resolve to be alert is clearly butting into the citizenry's near-almighty right to bear arms.

Warnings about terror suspects' easy access to combat rifles grew after 9/11 when it was disclosed that John Ashcroft, a gun rights zealot who was attorney general at the time, had blocked federal agents from matching gun-purchase records against the growing list of thousands of terror suspects. The privacy rights of innocent gun purchasers were deemed paramount in the national emergency. The policy was theoretically reversed, but federal agents complain that they are still stymied by laws and officials dedicated to the most extreme agenda of the gun lobby.

The alarming ease with which terror suspects can buy high-powered weapons on Main Street was disclosed by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress. This is an irony in itself since the Republican-controlled Congress declined last year to renew the 10-year-old assault rifle ban, which had helped keep battlefield weapons out of the hands of mayhem-minded citizens.

The study was requested by Senator Frank Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey, who is proposing to keep the gun-purchase records of terror suspects on hand for at least 10 years. Currently, purchase records must be destroyed within 24 hours - another victory for the gun lobby that was obsequiously enacted last year by Congress.

The Times still doesn't quite care about the fine points of gun regulation. The "assault rifles" that Americans can buy are not "battlefield weapons." I, along with thousands of other people, have sent them corrections on this point any number of times. The AK47 of AR15 that one can buy in a gun store now is a semi automatic weapon. It's not the selective fire (i.e., fully automatic capable) weapon that is used on battlefields. It's really no different from any other semi automatic weapon available. It's no more a "battlefield weapon" than a Hummer H2 is a military transport. But facts certainly shouldn't get in the way of a good scareditorial. I'm not even going to get into the .50 caliber canard...anyone who has ever tried to fire one of those behemoths knows that there's a better chance of getting a cop to say "these aren't the droids you're looking for" than in being able to use a .50 cal rifle to actually hit a plane in the air.

The real issue I have with these two editorials is what they imply. It's clear that they are advocating further regulation of guns. They go to such unlikely extremes in detailing the possible threats (e.g., a terrorist being able to somehow hit a flying plan with a .50 cal or a .50 cal round taking out a "communication center," as if a car bomb wouldn't be the far more likely method in such case) that they should just come out and say "we want all guns banned so terrorists can't use them against us."

I'm all for preemptively stopping terrorism, even if it means some sacrifice of civil liberties. The funny thing is, the liberal media have railed AGAINST that. Somewhere between the PATRIOT Act and the assault weapons ban, they go from being screaming the-terrorists-win-if-we-give-up-any-rights liberals to protect-America-at-all-costs conservatives. The facts are that terrorists are most likely to use plans, cars, trucks and computers to carry out the next attack on the US. If we're going to go to the unlikely extremes, shouldn't we be banning private ownership of SUVs and computers? Don't we already know that terrorists are coordinating and planning via websites? Isn't it FAR more likely that a computer will be at the core of the next attack? But weren't the liberal media screaming against the laws that allowed the government to monitor things like computer use? Am I missing something?

Guns are so passe for terror...

Front page of today's NY Times (yes, it mixes my two favorite topics: guns and the NY Times):

March 8, 2005
Terror Suspects Buying Firearms, Report Finds
By ERIC LICHTBLAU

ASHINGTON, March 7 - Dozens of terror suspects on federal watch lists were allowed to buy firearms legally in the United States last year, according to a Congressional investigation that points up major vulnerabilities in federal gun laws.

People suspected of being members of a terrorist group are not automatically barred from legally buying a gun, and the investigation, conducted by the Government Accountability Office, indicated that people with clear links to terrorist groups had regularly taken advantage of this gap.

Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, law enforcement officials and gun control groups have voiced increasing concern about the prospect of a terrorist walking into a gun shop, legally buying an assault rifle or other type of weapon and using it in an attack.

And, of course, they had to bring up the A word ("assault rifle"). Interesting, isn't it, that despite all these loopholes and despite the ban on "assault weapons" being lifted, not a single terror incident involving any firearms in the US.

That's not my point, though. Anyone who follows the news knows that the terrorists have figured out that when it comes to getting bang for your martyr, nothing beats a good old automobile loaded up with something that goes boom. They have REAL assault rifles in Iraq, but the threat isn't Omar with the AK. It's the Toyota with a few hundred pounds of explosives. A guy with an AK on full auto may be able to kill a handful of people...MAYBE. Same guy with a car can take out dozens. Maybe upwards of a hundred. The terrorists who are planning a strike in the US aren't thinking about guns, I'm pretty sure of that.

What they probably are thinking of is getting a nice big SUV, maybe a box van ala Tim McVeigh, loading it up with several thousand pounds of explosives and then driving it into a crowded urban area and taking out hundreds of people. Not only do they get to kill infidels, they'll shut down entire cities. After the first car bomb in America, you can rest assured that no dense urban area is going to allow vehicles in anymore. Since the goal of terrorists is to harm us economically as well as to kill us, there's no doubt that the risk isn't Bob's Guns n Ammo selling a semi auto AK. The risk is GM selling a Suburban. Mark my words.

If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the cockpit

Today's NY Times (aside: while I do seem to always point at the Times, I use them as a proxy for the entire old media) included a front page story that breathlessly disclosed the latest evil machinations of the Bush administration. In the story titled "Rule Change Lets CIA Freely Send Suspects Abroad To Jails," the Times starts off with this ominous bit of news:

"The Bush administration's secret program to transfer suspected terrorists to foreign countries for interrogation has been carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency under broad authority that has allowed it to act without case-by-case approval from the White House or the State or Justice Departments, according to current and former government officials.

The unusually expansive authority for the C.I.A. to operate independently was provided by the White House under a still-classified directive signed by President Bush within days of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the officials said.

The process, known as rendition, has been central in the government's efforts to disrupt terrorism, but has been bitterly criticized by human rights groups on grounds that the practice has violated the Bush administration's public pledge to provide safeguards against torture."

It's clear that the Times is trying to push the notion that Bush continues to use 9/11 as a pretext to wage some kind of illegal crusade against truth, justice and the Islamic way. They simply adore the word "torture" and miss no chance to point to Abu Grahib as evidence of the many nefarious facets of the Bush White House and the war against terror.

As another aside, those of us who think beyond what the Times tells us to think about must surely appreciate how the Times went from insisting (praying) that the Bush middle east doctrine would fail spectacularly, even calling for a halt to the elections in January '05, to ignoring the massive change occurring throughout the Arab world as a result of said Bush doctrine, to finally admitting, last week, that the Bush doctrine was working, to today's attempt at sowing doubt: gleefully insinuating that the old Arab model of repressive dictatorships was more stable than the emerging democracies. Back on topic, though...

Torture. Ooooooooooooh....It evokes haunting images of Chuck Norris in Vietnam, having a canvas sack with a hungry rat thrown over his head by the sadistic Vietnamese captor. Or a strapping, Allah fearing Jihadi getting a lap dance (something I've paid lots of money for...anything you'd pay $20 for at a strip club doesn't constitute torture in my book). In a perfect world, I'd be 100% against torture. In that same perfect world, I'd be 100% against hijacking commercial jets and flying them into office towers in lower Manhattan or the Pentagon.

The point is this: the rules of warfare, and those against torture, presume that the warring parties are willing to abide by certain structural rules. I.e., you can kill the enemy on the battlefield, but you can't directly target and kill civilians. Little things like that. Islamic terror can only fight us by not only rejecting the rules but also by counting on that while they won't play by the rules, we will. That's how they get their advantage. And if we give them this advantage, it's our fault, not theirs. Before 9/11, I think a good case could have been made that, with regard to the US against Islam, we still had a reason to play by the rules. But the moment that first jet breached the exterior of the north tower of the WTC, the rules, along with the WTC, disappeared into smoke.

If we find that torturing suspects can lead to better intelligence, or that it can serve as a deterrent, or any other by product that we find useful, then we should torture away. I'll go a step further. At the point that Islamic terror began executing hostages, that rule also went out the window. From that point on, our policy should have been to provide field executions, sans trials, for any captured enemy combatant. It would be our choice-if we thought the captive had information that would be of value, we could torture his sorry ass until he either broke or died. And once he did break, he'd get a nice bullet in the head (when we felt that he had served his purpose).

I'm not saying this is the Bush doctrine. I'm saying I wish it WERE the Bush doctrine. Before we do any of this, however, we should publish a statement as to our intent. That statement would say something like this: "People of the world: we, the United States of America, wish to live in peace with everyone. We will abide by all rules and norms of conduct applicable to the respective situations we find ourselves in. We will never be the first to violate said norms and rules. However, we will not be limited in our actions to protect our national interests if you violate said rules and norms first. The consequence of such actions will be wide ranging and merciless upon anyone who is a first violator and will only apply to said party. With great fondness, the People of the USA."

And as my last aside, I know that the foregoing will not sit well with many people and I'll be called all sorts of names. Some will argue that sinking to levels of lawlessness will only make things worse. Blah blah blah. Fine. We will have to disagree. But I'd like to ask this, for my liberal readers...why is it a woman's right to kill her unborn baby, a human being who has done no wrong other than to have been conceived at a time unacceptable to the mother, but it's not ok to kill a baby 17 years later, one who has admitted to engaging in the most heinous of violent crimes and taken lives himself? Why is it a right to kill an unborn baby but it's not a right, as part of our national defense, to rough up a terrorist or even execute him on the spot? If the "my body, my choice" argument is used, what about "my security, my choice"?

Eight shots, eight....

How do I love thee Sigi, let me count the ways... 

So there's a gun theme lately. My blog, my choice.

Anyway, it was a gorgeous day in the Bay Area today (low 70s, blue skies, no ANSWER riots in SF) and after doing some gentle things (I planted flowers in the yard today, so that gives me the right to do gun things), I decided it was time to see what the new-to-me 1943 Mauser can do. The brief version of the story is that it didn't blow up in my face and it didn't dislocate my shoulder (which is something I can't say for the first time I shot an 8mm Mauser about 20 years ago). It was actually a very smooth shooter, not bad kick (considering the 8mm round's power) and as accurate as an open sight 60+ year old military surplus rifle should be. I don't think I'd take it out shooting on a regular basis, but that's more a function of my desire to not push the thing too far. I bought it for it's historical value. Overall, though, it's a very respectable rifle and I can see why the Germans liked it so much. It's interesting to compare the rounds that were being used in WWII (8mm 175+ grain bullet for the Germans, .30-06 at about 150 or so grains for the Americans) to those being used today (7.62 for the AK round with a bullet of about 120 grains, 5.56 with about 55 grains for the M-16). Not totally accurate numbers, I know, but close enough. The bottom line is that the WWII rounds packed a lot more weight to them.

On to the picture above...After I shot about 15 rounds out of the Mauser, I switched to my beloved Sig SHR970 7mm magnum with a nice 12x Leupold Vari X II scope. I reload for this rifle, in part because it's cheaper than buying new rounds (about $8 for 20 versus $22+ for 20 from the factory), in other part because I can produce far more accurate ammo and in final part because I like being able to produce my own ammo without having to worry about the government getting involved in my ability to shoot. I've found that when I reload with standard 150 gr Remington soft point bullets with 60 gr of H 4831, I get damn good accuracy. But when I reload the same charge with a 150 gr Nosler Ballistic Tip bullet, I get incredible accuracy. Witness, the above. There are eight shots there from 100 yards...you may not be able to count them all, because the first four shots were all dead on the center X, with one of the shots going throw (nearly) the shot before it. Alas, after the fourth shot, the barrel started to heat up and the rounds began to spray a bit. That's the only issue I have with the SHR970-the barrel does heat up mighty quick and it definitely affects accuracy. At some point, I may end up getting a heavier barrel for the rifle. Nonetheless, even with a heated barrel, I'm still putting rounds into the 8 ring. And the first three or four shots are pure death...those first four shots cover an area the size of my thumbnail. From 100 yards. With an off the rack rifle.

If we can discuss Nazis again...

My new child! A 1943 German Mauser!

Ok, that's not what I was going to discuss, but since I really like this new rifle of mine, I had to display it for all to adore.

What I wanted to discuss was the now infamous Ward Churchill comment about the 9/11 victims being "little Eichmanns" who, in Churchill's view, deserved their fate. In his thinking, apparently, a good number of those at the WTC were not innocent victims, as they were bankers and lawyers and others who financed the military industrial complex, which in turn oppressed people around the world.

I'm not going to try to argue this one, as his views are so warped that they could fit right in with the typical lunatic fringe political garbage that passes for thought in the SF Bay Area. Instead, I'm just going to accept what he said. I'm a lawyer, I work on financing transactions for all sorts of things, including the military. The United States military. I'm proud of it, actually. It's not quite up there with being a door gunner on a Huey in 1968, but at least I'm doing something, as a corporate lawyer, that is more than, say, arranging for a doomed start up database company's seventeenth round of bridge financing.

I wasn't in the WTC on 9/11, I wasn't even living in NYC anymore on that date. So I wasn't attacked directly. However, if I am one of the many little Eichmanns who have a legitimate target on my noggin, as Churchill asserts, then don't I have the right to self defense too? See where I'm going with this? If I'm a legitimate target, I have a legitimate right to defend myself. This must mean that next time I see a protest on Market Street in San Francisco where the usual band of leftist asshats are being lead on an A.N.S.W.E.R riot in support of al Qaeda or Hizbollah or Hamas or any other Islamic terror group, I have the right to use the beautiful weapon above (or maybe my beloved Sig 7mm magnum or my trusty Winchester 30/30 or even my AK47) to take out as many of the "little bin Ladens" before they can take out me, little Eichmann. Right?