Peter Hitchens on British Gun Laws

We in Britain believe guns are so dangerous that only criminals should be allowed to have them. If you think this sounds unhinged, you are quite right. But, crazed as it is, such is the thinking behind this country's current law on firearms.

It is almost impossible for a law-abiding person to obtain or keep a gun, thanks to severe laws diligently enforced by a stern police force. Yet criminals, who care nothing for laws, can and do easily obtain guns and ammunition - which they use with increasing frequency.

There are some [expletive deleted] individuals who want to repeal the recently passed concealed carry law here in Minnesota. Unfortunately, when I see one of their bumper stickers I'm usually doing a pizza delivery and thus unable to perform the appropriate visual gestures.

Our first question to these persons, or anyone else who is attempting to enact legislation to disarm us should be, "are you planning to mug someone?" Or alternately, "are you planning to murder someone?"

If they object to this form of response to their irrational beliefs, point out to them that they are the ones who are calling for violence against innocent people and that they are the ones who are attempting to use the power of government against the very people whose rights it was established to uphold and protect.

And if they call you, or gun owners in general, nazis, then feel free to introduce them to some fellows from Milwaukee who will be happy to disabuse them of that notion.

RECITATION OF THE BATTLE OF CAMERONE

Thought for the Day

The public burning of the flag of our republic is act of symbolic magic, or to use a more common term, a voodoo ceremony.

The burning a symbol of our republic represents what the nihilist performing the act and his confederates would do to us if they had the power and the opportunity. Which is to destroy us and everything we have achieved, to kill us and to reduce our homeland to ashes.

Given the means and opportunity they would murder us and our children as ideological relatives have done in such hellholes as Soviet Russia, Red China, and Rouge Kampuchea.

Unfortunately, for the time being, they are sheltered by the very laws whose validity they deny by their actions.

No, I Don't Think So.

My current horoscope as published in THE ONION:

Sagittarius: (Nov. 22—Dec. 21)

A bizarre misunderstanding on your part will result in your going to church every Sunday and speaking sincerely to invisible entities with the belief that it might do you some sort of good.

Not bloody likely.

I got my ass irredeemably damned to Hell about three decades ago.

Old Fashioned Nihilism

Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad, a member of the Moon God murder cult, said:

"We don't make a distinction between civilians and non-civilians, innocents and non-innocents. Only between Muslims and unbelievers. And the life of an unbeliever has no value. It has no sanctity."

Well boys and girls, can you say, "fucking murderer?" Can you also say, "Enemy of Mankind in General?"

I knew you could.

When someone insists on behaving as though he were a rabid animal he leaves the rest of no choice but to identify and deal with him as such. Nothing can be achieved by pretending otherwise except the destruction of one's self and other innocent people.

And this damned fool of a witch doctor is also bringing us closer to the day when we will stop trying sort out the killers from the poor fools who just bang their heads on the ground. We may at some point simply leave the task of sorting them out to God.

A Study In Contrasts

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said at a DoD operation briefing yesterday:

To get a sense of the stark contrast between the good that coalition forces are doing in Iraq and the tactics that the enemy has used consistently, if one thinks back, they used hospitals, they used mosques, they used schools as weapons locations and fortresses to fight from throughout the time of the invasion. The photo of terrorists using a mosque in Najaf as a base for attacks against our forces is an example of what we're finding. There have been additional attacks taken from mosques in Fallujah, and I believe there have been embedded reporters who have been able to -- as well as combat camera -- able to make some of that available to the American people.

There are two ways, I suppose, one could inform readers of the Geneva Convention stipulation against using places of worship to conduct military attacks. One might be to headline saying that Terrorists Attack Coalition Forces From Mosques. That would be one way to present the information.

Another might be to say: Mosques Targeted in Fallujah. That was the Los Angeles Times headline this morning.

Imagine for a moment the following headline published of April 20, 1993, in the Los Angeles Times or any other major newspaper:

SOCIALIST DEATH SQUAD ATTACKS PLACE OF WORSHIP

One can only imagine it of course because instead of publishing the truth the newspapers and other major media have consistently taken the side of the socialists and other anti-human barbarians at every opportunity.

If the established media had consistently published the truth the Democratic Party leadership and most of their legislative delegations on the state and federal levels would be out of office and in prison. The worst of them would be dead or awaiting execution for their crimes against the citizens and constitution of our republic.

And Bill Clinton would be giving blow-jobs instead of receiving them.

Sometimes one can only wish.

Rabid Animal Alert

If you will pardon me for quoting the New York Times:

In this former industrial town north of London, a small group of young Britons whose parents emigrated from Pakistan after World War II have turned against their families' new home. They say they would like to see Prime Minister Tony Blair dead or deposed and an Islamic flag hanging outside No. 10 Downing Street.

They swear allegiance to Osama bin Laden and his goal of toppling Western democracies to establish an Islamic superstate under Shariah law, like Afghanistan under the Taliban. They call the Sept. 11 hijackers the "Magnificent 19" and regard the Madrid train bombings as a clever way to drive a wedge into Europe.

First: Anyone who wants to see Britain subjugated under an alien and anti-human ideology is properly called a traitor. Although in this case there is something to be said for the term "vermin."

"All Muslims of the West will be obliged," he said, to "become his sword" in a new battle. Europeans take heed, he added, saying, "It is foolish to fight people who want death — that is what they are looking for."

I on the other hand want to live.

I want to live what Ayn Rand characteristically called The Life Proper to Man.

And I will accept no substitute.

What we should call Humanity is not merely a physical state but is also a state of mind. Or what may also be called a spiritual state.

To be properly Human is to live one's own life by own rational judgement and to recognize the right of others to do the same. To be properly Human is also to deal with other persons on the basis of consent, not deal with others as though they were mere animals.

But adherents of Islam, and their de facto allies in the west the socialists, indulge in the fantasy that we are nothing more than hominid livestock and that they are entitled by the will of their false god, Allah or the Collective, to treat us as such. No amount of evidence will dissuade them from these beliefs.

But then who can pay attention to reality when one's nose is firmly jammed into a copy of the Koran or the Communist Manifesto?

They willfully ignore the fact that it was an American (who due to a legal technicality at the time was still an Englishman) who said, "Give me Liberty or give me death!"

And Ayn Rand, a former subject of a communist state, when asked if one was better off being Red or dead replied, "Better see the Reds dead!"

As for myself, I will die before I degrade myself before the false priests and followers of a false god.

The fight for Liberty is a fight to the death.

Bring them on.

Les Puts On His Black Pointy Anarchist Hat

My friend Mark Urbin has asked me to plant a google-bomb. In this case, link the word "unelectable" to Comrade Kerry's campaign site.

Yes folks, John "I-married-for-money" Kerry is unelectable!

No Wonder MALLRATS Sucked

The shopping mall was invented by a socialist:

Austrian architect Victor Gruen brought the mall concept to this country and designed the first enclosed American mall, drawing on ideas from socialist theory. He saw malls as the new source of American community, though later in his life he became more skeptical.

It's also no wonder that I usually feel uncomfortable when I'm in a shopping mall.

Of course like all socialist schemes, the shopping mall didn't work out as planned:

The shopping centers were even supposed to contain sprawl by rounding up all the strip development and corralling it into a single planned environment. But of course they had the opposite effect, hastening the demise of old-fashioned urban neighborhoods, increasing dependence on the car and, in the ultimate indignity, fostering even more strip development, like dreadnoughts drawing barnacles.

For Gruen, as for any other socialist attempting to treat human society as an engineering problem, the actual results are usually the opposite of the goals.

Gruen's life appears to be as interesting--and paradoxical--as his work. A tireless self-promoter and pamphleteer, he started out as a simple store designer and managed, over the course of his career, to repackage himself as the guru of urban salvation. In theory he embraced the automobile as fervently as most Americans did, yet personally he hated driving, hated the suburbs and eventually, it seems, hated even the vulgar, sprawling, profitable nation whose landscape he helped to shape. Among his many bad ideas was saving downtowns by banning automobiles from key streets and building giant malls and parking structures at city centers--in effect making them more like suburbia. He also ran through four wives.

When I was growing up Downtown Minneapolis had an interesting (not always nice) collection of shops, restaurants, and cinemas. I had an afterschool job cleaning two Fanny Farmer candy shops. I bought a large part of my early collection of Science Fiction novels, along with magazines such as ANALOG, STARLOG, CINEFANTASTIQUE, and CINEMAGIC at Shinder's on Seventh. Thanks to Comrade Gruen and like minded drones in the city government all of the neat parts of Downtown Minneapolis have been replaced, through the abuse of eminent domain, by a collection of dull and souless structures whose primary function is to generate property tax revenues.

Feh!

Another Thought for the Day

This is a message for the Left:

If we on the Right were as you have imagined us, a bunch of NAZIS, then you on the Left would already be dead.

If I have a complaint about the Right, it is that may they be a bit too nice under the present circumstances.

Of course in reality the National Socialist German Worker's Party was a bunch of Lefties with spiffy uniforms and a leather fetish. In the context of the politics of the Weimar Republic they were the moderates as compared to the German Communist Party who, unlike the National Socialists, apparently went in for an early version of the "grunge" style of attire.

Or at least Bertholt Brecht did.

Thought for the Day

I am sometimes amazed and disgusted at my own sloppy copyediting.

"The persistence of the Left in believing, or attempting to get us to believe, that a certain fighter pilot with a Masters degree in Businesss Administration from Harvard is an idiot, continues to both disgust and astound me. "

That's three "s", not four.

Duh!

The Established Media In Action

How to present a biased view as though it were a fact.

The persistence of the Left in believing, or attempting to get us to believe, that a certain fighter pilot with a Masters degree in Businesss Administration from Harvard is an idiot, continues to both disgust and astound me.

Seriously, if you haven't already, take a demonstration flight from any local flight school, and then imaging trying to control a much larger aircraft that flies TEN TIMES FASTER than a Cessna or Piper trainer and is armed with automatic cannons and guided missiles.

And then try to call a man who clearly demonstrated that he could do that an idiot.

Another complaint that is often voiced by the Established Media and various other self-styled intellectuals is that President Bush sees things in "black and white", in other words, he has a moral standard.

Here's an Objectivist Joke. What do you call a totally amoral man? A totally dead man.

In moral issues, and by extension political issues, the difference between right and wrong is the difference between joy and suffering, and the difference between life and death. There is simply no way to compromise between the two.

As Ayn Rand once pointed out, any attempt to compromise food with poison will only result in a poisoning.

Anyone who demands that we do is trying to con us into killing ourselves.

Yay John!

CHARGES DROPPED AGAINST FILMMAKER JOHN FUCILE

Check out his site at SmackDabMedia.com

Someone Else's Thought for the Day

Baldilocks Wrote on April 19, 2004:

Bowing our heads in sorrow and remembering the innocent Fallen is noble and necessary, but if—after we raise our heads and dry our tears--we don’t do something to stop the purveyors of evil, then what the flock is the point?

Oppose evil or at least get out of the way of those who are doing so. Is that too much to ask?

Actually, for the Left, it is.

According to many on the left, the people of a nation need a leader to think for them and to collectively direct their lives. In the view of the Left the Russians needed a big brother or father figure such as Stalin, the Chinese needed a Mao, the Koreans (all of them, not just the northerners) needed the father and son team of the Kim Dynasty (any sympathies the Left ever had for fellow socialists like the Austrian Corporal or the Loud Mouthed Italian fellow have been quietly dropped down the memory hole) and that we Americans now need a Kerry (Or in 2008 a Hillary) to guide and comfort us.

In the view of the Left the people of Iraq were grievously harmed when we removed their local version of Big Brother from power. Never mind the death and terror that their so-called leader, his sons, and their political apparatus rained down upon them. The people of Iraq, like all other ordinary people in the view of the Left, are hominid livestock who can’t live without the guidance of a shepherd.

This is, of course, a total fantasy.

The Shepherd Fantasy, as I am presently calling it, appears to be a psychological device that members of the left use to evade knowledge of, to mentally blank out, the fact that they are not really productive or otherwise useful members of a human society but are truly nothing more than a bunch of parasites and outright predators who are feeding off their betters.

As Ayn Rand once pointed out, they need us. We on the other hand, have absolutely no use for them.

So why won’t the Left get out of the way of those of us who fight evil in this world?

Because they know that sooner or later, we will properly identify them for what they are, and that we will eventually turn our guns upon them.

Interesting Letter

Andrew Sullivan posted a letter from a chaplain working in the Fallujah area:

B) Saddam could not and did not control Faluja. He bought off those he could, killed those he couldn't and played all leaders against one another. It was and is a 'difficult' town. Nothing new about that. What is new is that outside people have come in to stir up unrest. How many are there is classified, but let me tell you this: there are more people in the northeast Minneapolis gangs than there are causing havoc in Faluja. Surprised?

Actually, I am surprised.

I grew up in Northeast Minneapolis, I didn't know that there are organized gangs operating there. In fact I now routinely deliver pizzas to areas of Minneapolis that are far worse than "Nordeast".

So why are our guys getting shot at in Iraq?

1) This country became a welfare state under Saddam. If you cared about your well-fare, you towed the line or died. The state did your thinking and your bidding. Want a job? Pledge allegiance to the Ba’ath party. Want an apartment, a car, etc? Show loyalty. Electricity, water, sewage, etc. was paid by the state. Go with the flow: life is good. Don't and you're dead. Now, what does that do to initiative? drive? industry?

So, we come along and lock up sugar daddy and give these people the toughest challenge in the world, FREEDOM. You want a job? Earn it! A house? Buy it or build it! Security? Build a police force, army and militia and give it to yourself. Risk your lives and earn freedom. The good news is that millions of Iraqis are doing just that, and some pay with their lives. But many, many are struggling with freedom (just like East Germans, Russians, Czechs, etc.) and they want a sugar daddy, the U.S.A., to do it all. We refuse. We don't want to be plantation owners. We make it clear we are here to help, not own or stay. They get mad about that, sometimes.

It no surprise to hear that some of the adherents of the "sugar daddy" party are talking about staging an armed uprising if Comrade Kerry doesn't win or otherwise obtain victory in the next election.

Bring it on. I have over 4000 rounds of NATO (mostly British) surplus .308 that are waiting to be put to good use.

And just to put some things in perspective:

Hey, America, don't go weak kneed on us: 585 dead American's made an investment here. That's a whole lot less than were killed on American highways last month. Their lives are honored when we stay the course and do the job we came to do; namely, set the conditions for a new government and empower these people to be the great nation they are capable of being.

Whether we win or lose in this struggle depends on the folks at home. If we don't allow our guys to win in Iraq then we will be shooting it out Islamic terror gangs here at home.

Defeat in Iraq is not an option.

Interesting Interview

Excerpt from BBSpot's interview with Wil Wheaton:

BBspot (5): Did you feel like your character suffered from an Oedipus complex in Star Trek:The Next Generation? I mean, your mom was really hot, and your dad died under cloudy circumstances.

Wil: When Wesley's dad died, Wesley was so traumatized, he had to spend many, many nights sleeping in Dr. Crusher's quarters...and the therapeutic sponge baths really helped with the grieving process. Oh, and the oral sex.

Maybe I'm a bit of a prude, but I've always felt that performing or receiving oral sex was a bit like perfoming an assisted masturbation.

BBspot (11): Tell us why you're doing WilWheaton.net and about future plans for you and the site?

Wil: It's all part of my Bavarian Illuminatti-driven plot to rule the world. Now that you've read that, we're coming for you with our Orbital Mind Control Lasers.

I for one welcome our new trekian mast ... oh ... it's only Wesley.

Feh!

News of the Past

Triumph of the Will Sweeps 1943 Cannes Film Festival

How Bush Caused 9/11, an essay by Orson Scott Card
Here is the money quote, but read the whole thing:

The only people to blame for terrorism are the terrorists.

The only people to blame for the recent atrocities in Iraq are those who mobbed, murdered, and mutilated Americans who had come to bring peace and freedom to the vast majority of Iraqis who want those things.

And the only way to put a stop to this evil being done in the name of Islam is to make it clear that America will relentlessly pursue any and all terrorist-sponsoring governments.

That's a decision that's up to the Bush administration only as long as they're in office and have the support of Congress.

Guess who decides whether they'll stay in office, and have Congressmen and Senators who support them?

So if we believe these hacks who are exploiting the victims of 9/11 to gain political advantage, then we can vote for Kerry.

Thus we'll prove Osama was right to promise his people that Americans are weak and always lose courage if you bloody them enough.

The Russians on the Kyoto Treaty:

Kyoto is a "death treaty" that will "stifle economic growth" and bring "many negative implications" because it will limit Russian carbon emission growth, Mr Illarionov said in comments reported by news agency Interfax on Wednesday.

The global agreement was worse than the Gosplan committee responsible for the famous communist five-year plans, he said. Even Stalinist era prison camps had better conditions, he added: "In a gulag, people were at least given the same rations ... from one day to the next, but the Kyoto protocol proposes decreasing rations day by day."

Tim Russert and liberal democrat Senator John Kerry do their best to imitate the "Who's on First?" bit on the last Meet the Press:

MR. RUSSERT: You do not believe the war on terror is primarily a military operation, not a law enfor...

SEN. KERRY: No...

MR. RUSSERT: You don't.

SEN. KERRY: ...not primarily.

MR. RUSSERT: You don't.

SEN. KERRY: Not primarily.

MR. RUSSERT: You do not.

SEN. KERRY: Not primarily.

Or you could say that the Senator is trying to be a hawk and dove at the same time.
Odds are this course of action will just annoy the hawks and drive dove votes to Ralph Nader.
Read more of the exchange.

And Then...

...I'll be off to Mom's for a couple of days.

In the meantime you can get a peek at the poster for the new Michael Moore film.

Thought for the Day

Today is the Two Hundred Twenty Ninth anniversary of the battles of Lexington and Concord.

Today is the Eleventh anniversary of the Waco Massacre.

Today is the Ninth anniversary of the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City.

If the Established Liberal Media do make note of this day they will in their infinite pretense of
wisdom speak only of Mr. McVeigh's actions without any mention of his intent to retaliate for
deaths inflicted upon the innocent two years prior to the bombing.

Mr. McVeigh has accepted the ultimate penalty for his actions. The perpetrators of the murders
of the Branch Davidians still walk the streets of our country as free men.

Need I ask what's wrong with this?

Uh Huh Department

Brought to you by the Dork Tower website.

No, it's not porn.

So Now We Know...

...why most French movies suck.

Quote of the Day

"You do not understand what martyrdom means."

-- Ayatollah Muqtada al-Sadr

It means that you're really and lethally fucking dumb.

Right?

Meanwhile, In La La Land...

The modern liberal talk radio network Air America (or as they used to spell it in the former Soviet Union, Air Amerika) has obtained a court order to compel a Chicago radio station to put their programming on the air.

Neal Boorz had this to say on the subject:

Doesn't this sound a bit familiar somehow? Walk through the sequence. Here we have a left wing effort that apparently fails in the private market place. Do you fall back, regroup, tweak your product, improve your business practices and give it another shot? Why no! You're a liberal You do what liberals have been doing for decades when their initiatives fail in the marketplace. You go to court! Of course! You go to court to see if you can get a judge to do for you what you weren't able to do for yourself in the free marketplace. Liberals have a long and very rich history of resorting to implementing their agenda through court action. It looks like they're sticking to the same playbook here.

It's a very old playbook indeed.

"If they won't give you what you want, take it by force."

Man is a being of both mind and body. When our ancestors began to create tools and use them to alter the environment for their own benefit the emphasis of the evolutionary process shifted from the strength of the physical body to the strength of the mind. Our numbers began to grow as we learned to harness and control natural processes such life cycles of plants and animals.

But some so-called men, whom we should call savages or barbarians, chose a different path. Instead of harnessing and controlling nature they chose to harness and control other men.

They took the tools that were created to improve human life and used them as instruments of subjugation and destruction. The first of the barbarians took the spear that was invented to hunt animals for food and used it to murder and enslave other men. Some of the present day barbarians took some commercial airliners and used them to snuff out thousands of lives as a sacrifice to a false god.

Comrades Franken, Garafalo, et al, are using a judicial system that was created for the purpose of protecting the rights of Americans as a means of violating rights of a radio station owner.

And then they have the bloody nerve to call themselves progressives.

At least Attila the Hun and the Great Khans were men enough to wield their own swords.

In Other News

I've updated four of the existing definitions in my New Devil's Dictionary.

Here are two of the definitions:

Liberal, Classical: Someone who believes that the rest of Mankind has something better to do. Believes that the helpless and innocent should be protected and deeply cares about the condition of Western Civilization.

Liberal, Modern: Someone who believes the the rest of Mankind has nothing better to do. Believes that the helpless and innocent should be attacked and deeply hates Western Civilization.

Campus Commies Starve Selves

Unfortunately the next generation of communist agitators will not starve themselves to death.

(TV5) Mount Pleasant--You usually find college students hanging out at the Taco Bell, not protesting it. But that's what's happening in Mount Pleasant. A group of students from Central Michigan University are participating in a hunger strike to protest low wages and poor working conditions of South Florida farmers who grow tomatoes for the Taco Bell fast food chain.

The students are members of the Student- Farmworker Alliance. They plan to take three day shifts, forgoing meals, and have set up a tent city on a campus lawn.

One of the nice things about working for Border Foods is that every paycheck comes with a twenty-percent off coupon for meals at any Border Foods restaurant including their Taco Bell franchises.

I'll have to drop in for a bite soon.

Of course we could also ask a question of the caring and compassionate champions of the peasants and livestock, did the thought ever cross whatever passes for your mind that the alternative to a crappy job with crappy wages is NO JOB AND NO WAGES AT ALL?

No. The thought never does, but the campus Marxoids will continue to strike their feel-good poses at the expense of real productive people.

Thought for the Day

The act of appeasement hands to the enemy, barbarians such as Hitler and the NSDAP, a victory that they would never have obtained by their own power.

Some people have yet to grasp this simple fact.

Oh Really?

Stephen Erwin of Hour Eleven writes:

BATF statistics also show that the percent of assault weapons recovered in crimes dropped from 3.6% in 1995 to 1.2% in 2002. No statistics were available for earlier years. It would be interesting to see if this number also peaked in 1995.That was the year that the national news stopped trying to convince gang members and drug dealers that assault weapons were their “weapon of choice.” Since then criminals seem to have returned to using more practical firearms.

So now go out and spread the truth about assault weapons. It will drive the liberal anti-gunners crazy.

Seriously, do you folks have any idea how hard it is to stuff an AK-47 down one's pant's?

Try it some time.

A Question For The Day

Ann Coulter writes:

After Saddam Hussein's forces invaded Kuwait in 1990, torturing men and raping women, Rep. Nancy Pelosi took to the floor of the House to say, "I hope the point will be made that we take very seriously the environmental consequences of our actions." Rep. Dick Gephardt said: "History shows that even brutal dictators have been toppled and defeated by sanctions." And so it was again after 9-11. Sixteen months after the attack, John Kerry gave a speech saying, "Mr. President, do not rush to war."

So what is the difference between a Democratic Party office holder and an Enemy of Mankind?

Meanwhile, In The Holy Socialist Motherland...

The Russian military plans to launch a television channel.

However, when asked what programs the channel would air, Yuri Belov, the head of the Defense Ministry’s broadcasting studio, told MosNews that this information was under military classification. “This is a military secret. I would go to prison for seven years if I told you,” he said.

Uh, huh.

What A Difference!

According to the Zub Report the State of Israel has with less than 1/1000th of the world's population produced:

The cell phone was developed in Israel by Israelis working in the Israeli branch of Motorola, which has its largest development center in Israel.

Most of the Windows NT and XP operating systems were developed by Microsoft-Israel.

The Pentium MMX Chip technology was designed in Israel at Intel. Both the Pentium-4 microprocessor and the Centrino processor were entirely designed, developed and produced in Israel.

The Pentium microprocessor in your computer was most likely made in Israel.

Voice mail technology was developed in Israel. Both Microsoft and Cisco built their only R&D facilities outside the US in Israel.

The technology for the AOL Instant Messenger and ICQ was developed in 1996 by four young Israelis.

The Palestinians -- in compliance with the depraved rantings and ravings of a long deceased pedophile rapist, robber, and murderer -- have produced the death and destruction of both themselves and hundreds of Israeli men, women, and children.

And the collected intellectuals of the left have in their infinite wisdom declared the Palestinians to be the morally superior people.

Or as they used to zay int ze olt kountry, der Volk!

The Amazing Things You Can Read On A Film Review Page

Pete Vonder Haar writes in Film Threat:

An experiment conducted by me and a friend on a 22-hour drive from our nation’s capitol to Texas proved conclusively that CB radios are used primarily for one thing: sharing information about prostitutes. There’s no grizzled philosophy of the road to be gleaned from listening to truckers on a CB, but rather where the hookers are, how the hookers look, and how much the hookers cost. To be fair, they also occasionally discussed the location of police, but only because police know where to find the best hookers.

All the times I've driven across the country I could not find one hooker at any truck stop anywhere.

Clinton Blew Best Chance to Get Bin Laden. No surprise there...

Twenty Questions for Richard Clarke

No, I Wasn't Planning To See It, Why Do You Ask?

I came across a review of The Exorcist II on one of my net surfing safaris:

The major theme of Exorcist II is that Linda Blair has developed breasts. Her acting on the other hand remains much the same as in the original Exorcist -- in which she was twelve. Her dialogue is riddled with grammatical error and slang and is delivered with a certain lascivious stupidity. My rental copy is not even in lip-synch. It's like I'm watching an old kung fu movie, combined with the overall cheap aura of bad porn. I kept waiting for Peter North to step out at any moment and begin undressing her.

The premise is that the Church decides to send a priest (Richard Burton) to investigate the death of Father Merrin who was killed during the exorcism in the original film. Making perfect sense, this investigation kicks off some SIX YEARS after his mysterious death, as evidenced by Regan now being eighteen. Burton catches up with Regan at her psychiatrist's office where he discovers that the demon may still have a fingerhold on her, and that she now has breasts.

I think I'll put on my copy of ZARDOZ instead.

What Planet Am I On Again?

Senator Barbara Boxer, a noted political hoplophobe, threatens to cut off funding for the Transportation Security Administration if they don't arm airline pilots sooner.

Huh?

Lileks says:

We stopped pretending we would ratify Kyoto. We only spent $15 billion on AIDS in Africa. We did not take dictation from Paris. If we had done these things, it would minimize the world’s anger.

Is the world angry at Russia, which spends nothing on AIDS and rebuffed Kyoto? Is the world angry at China, which got a pass on Kyoto and spends nothing on AIDS for other countries?

Is the world angry at North Korea for killings its people? Angry at Iran for smothering that vibrant nation with corrupt and thuggish mullocracy? Angry at Syria for occupying Lebanon? Angry at Saudi Arabia for its denial of women’s rights? Angry at Russia for corrupt elections? Is the world angry at China for threatening Taiwan, or angry at France for joining the Chinese in joint military exercises that threatened the island on the eve of an election? Is the world angry at Zimbabwe for stealing land and starving people? Is the world angry at Pakistan for selling nuclear secrets? Is the world angry at Libya for having an NBC program?

Is the world angry at the thugs of Fallujah?

Is the world angry at anyone besides America and Israel?

I Want To See This Cartoon

John, as you all know, is an excellent caricaturist. Occasionally, for a little extra money, John works caricature gigs at conventions, parties, Bar Mitzvahs, etc. Last night John was drawing at a birthday party for a local college student. Her parents were throwing the bash at their home in a wealthy area of Atlanta called Buckhead. Swimming pool. Live band. Catering. Open bar. Normally the latter is not a problem. John is a seasoned professional. But, for reasons that remain sketchy, John decided to cut loose.

The problem apparently started (I got all this second-hand) when John drew a caricature of a Russian foreign-exchange student who was wearing a shirt that said "Bush Lied, People Died." Now, John has been working these gigs for decades. He knows how to read a subject, how far to push exaggerations like big noses and pot bellies, and how to play on-lookers for laughs. But, for some reason, perhaps the Scotch, John went for the throat. Even the band stopped playing when John screamed "TAH-DAH!" and presented a cartoon of Stalin wearing a t-shirt that said "Socialist Lie, Millions Die."

-- Allen Forkum

So Anyway...

I bought a Krasnogorsk-3 movie camera from an auction on e-bay.

Dana the landlady thinks that I am insane for doing so. She has compared my objective of making a feature length Traveller movie on film to my declaring that I will make a transcontinental journey in a 1913 Hupmobile.

I was going to buy an external lightmeter anyway.