Announcement

Dr. John Ray has a new blog that features the depraved rantings of Marx and Engels in their own words.

Check it out.

Old Joke

Chaplain: ...and I can handle all denominations.

New CO: Can you do an Agnostic thing next Sunday?

Chaplain: Maybe.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled reality.

Thought for the Day

The Left doesn't care how big a pile of human skulls is as long as they are firmly seated on top of it.

Victor Davis Hanson has some more to say on the subject.

In Other News

Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark volunteers to defend Saddam Hussein.

Clark said in the Jordanian capital Amman that his principle concern was protecting the former president's rights, who only saw a lawyer for the first time this month - a year after his capture.

"In international law, anyone accused of crime has the right to be tried by a confident, independent and impartial court, and there can be no fair trial without those qualities," he said.

"The special court in Iraq was created by the Iraqi governing council, which is nothing more than a creation of the US military occupation and has no authority in law as a criminal court," he said.

So because the Nuremburg Tribunal was created by the "military occupation" of the victorious Allied Powers we should treat it decisions to hang and imprison the local mob of non-soviet socialists as illegitimate?

Clark also said the US itself must be tried for the November assault on Falluja, destruction of houses, torture in prisons and its role in the deaths of thousands of Iraqis in the war.

So no act -- such as the rape, robbery, and murder of the innocent residents of Falluja by the militants -- is not sufficiently vile enough to put down by force?

But then Ramsey Clark has a history of defending anything but Human Life and Human Civilization.

So what else is new?

Head Scratching Time

Overheard in San Francisco:

"We shouldn't think too badly of the Japanese. After all, they would not have attacked Pearl Harbor if we had not hit them first with the atom bomb."

If this were a Monty Python sketch a knight in full plate armor would walk into the scene and strike the speaker on the top of his/her head with a rubber chicken and then walk away.

On second thought, the twit in question may actually qualify for the full sixteen-ton weight treatment.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled reality.

The Doctor Is In

Dr. Thomas Sowell has an excellent idea:

Events of this past year have shown the need for a special award in journalism for those who think that the purpose of reporting news is to cause the public to adopt the political views of those who do the reporting. Therefore this column announces the first annual Joseph Goebbels award for that journalist who best exemplifies the spirit and the practice that Dr. Goebbels pioneered.

And the good doctor has also named the first recipient:

No need to prolong the suspense. This year's Joseph Goebbels award goes by a narrow but decisive margin to CBS News anchorman Dan Rather for his planned broadcast on "60 Minutes" -- just days before the election -- to discredit President Bush's National Guard service 30 years earlier. Leave aside for the moment the fact that discrepancies in the documents he relied on have convinced experts and many others that they were forgeries. Why was what George W. Bush did or didn't do 30 years earlier "news" in 2004?

It was news by Dr. Goebbels' standard -- something that could lead to desired political reactions by the audience. Waiting until it would have been virtually impossible for an effective answer to be made before election day was in the same Goebbels spirit. Had the documents been real, Dan Rather would still have been a strong contender for the award. The fact that virtually everyone, with the notable exception of Mr. Rather, now regards those documents as fake -- instead of simply "not authenticated" -- makes Dan Rather the clear winner of the Joseph Goebbels award for 2004.

My thought at the time when it became apparent that CBS had presented false documents in their effort to hurt President Bush was, "GAME F***ING OVER, MAN!"

I had to remind myself at the time to not be complacent that the President would be reelected. After all, to those value power above all, no act in the pursuit of power is too depraved.

Does Ann Coulter Know About This?

"Unfortunately, on average, everyday 50 Iranian girls and boys convert secretly to Christian denominations in our country."

-- Hasan Mohammadi, Employee of the Ministry of Education, Islamic Republic of Iran.

Unfortunate is the not the word that I would use. I would say that it is a definite step up.

(But Les, you're an atheist! Shhhhh!)

Read about how Christianity is spreading in Mullahland.



(HT: Dr. John Ray)

Finely Spun News

Ms. Anita Snow of the Associated Press wrote:

Cheered by hundreds of lawmakers, a smiling Fidel Castro walked in public Thursday for the first time since shattering his kneecap in a fall two months ago.

Legislators looked stunned, then smiled and applauded, when Cuba's 78-year-old president entered the main auditorium of the Convention Palace on the arm of a uniformed schoolgirl to attend a year-end National Assembly meeting.

The Associated Press as of late has shown a pronounced tendency to show the Enemies of Mankind in a favorable light. Particularly those presently operating in Iraq.

Also notable is their ongoing tendency to treat the reams of falsehoods emitted by such persons and states as if they were the truth. In this case the notion that the so-called national assembly is a legislative body that truly represents the will of people instead of in fact being a collection of party stooges who perform the political voodoo ceremonies that create the illusion of legitimacy for what is in fact the will of the dictator.

Of course on a certain level I will say that it is a good thing that Comrade Fidel is up and about. Of course when I say that, it is, like a wish that Bill and Hillary Clinton remain married, an act of pure malice on my part.

After all, it would look a lot better if, when Comrade Fidel is finally punished for his crimes against the people of Cuba, that he is standing before the firing squad instead of sitting in front of it.

Someone Else's Thought For The Day

Science Fiction intersects real world politics at National Review Online:

Simply put, UFO was too realistic. SHADO knew next to nothing about the enemy it was fighting. Who the aliens were, where they were from, and what they wanted remained matters for speculation. Almost every bit of information SHADO managed to acquire about them seemed to lead to more questions than answers. Many of the stories featured downbeat, ambiguous endings. And every now and then, the aliens would thwart SHADO. The series was, dramatically speaking, unsatisfying to a mass audience.

Then there was the problem of Straker himself. To put it mildly, he did not suffer fools gladly, which made him one of the most unusual lead characters in television history. While he was capable of kicking back in his office with his sidekick, Alec Freeman (George Sewall), and while he could (very occasionally) crack a smile, Ed Straker was most of the time a tightly wound spring. His job was to kill (or, if possible, capture) the aliens before they could do harm to any human, and that was that.

In short, Straker was no Captain James T. Kirk, a heroic figure who managed to answer all the audience’s questions and tie up all the loose ends with a witty quip before the final credits. Rather, Straker had a serious edge to him. Under the pressure of his job, we see his marriage collapse. Faced with a captured alien who refuses to talk, he doesn’t hesitate to order that a dangerous, experimental drug be used to break down his resistance, an effort that ends in the alien’s death. He even orders the destruction of an alien space ship he knows is carrying his friend, a top SHADO officer, back to the aliens’ home planet. To Straker, individuals mean nothing. All that matters is stopping the aliens.

Ed Straker certainly would have been a frightening man to work for, which is probably why the mass of TV viewers found him a frightening man to watch. His kind of single-minded determination was in short supply in the 1970s, which may explain why the series appealed to people of a conservative sensibility.

In real life, however, we sure could use someone like Ed Straker for the new post of national intelligence director. Fiction is now fact: We are up against a ruthless, determined foe bent on doing us harm and about whom we know rather little. Porter Goss seems to be making a good start at the CIA, lopping off a few heads and shaking things up a bit, but its not clear that he is in Straker territory yet.

If a real-life Ed Straker is out there, now is his time.

Fortunately, I'm A Non-Smoker

My horoscope from this week's Onion:

Sagittarius: (Nov. 22—Dec. 21)

You'll wish you'd bought better shoes when your smelly, worn-out, charred sneakers are featured in a "Don't Smoke At The Pumps" PSA.

This Is Insane

City of Houston to be nuked on the Monday after Christmas:

From a former Bundesnachrichtendienst member-- Intel Expert

Paul Wofowitz will authorise the detonation of a nuclear payload in the Houston area on December 27, 2004. The Hidden Hand network (Mossad/al-Qaeda/SAS) of which he is the nominal controller has verified in advance every aspect of operational integrity - a failsafe job with zero chance of discovery.

And if you believe this you can also get a good deal on a bridge between Brooklyn and Manhattan on eBay.

My lack of God, what some people will believe...

Someone Else's Thought For The Day

R.J. Rummel on the toxicity of Marxism:

There is a supremely important lesson for human life and welfare to be learned from this horrendous sacrifice to one ideology: No one can be trusted with unlimited power.

Professor Rummel presently puts the Marxist bodycount at 110 million. And he has a suggestion for us:

The next time you come across or are lectured by one of our indigenous Marxists, or almost the equivalent, leftist zealots, ask them how they can justify the murder of over a hundred million their absolutist faith has brought about, and the misery it has created for many hundreds of millions more.

(The hat tip goes to Dr. John Ray at Dissecting Leftism.)

Rant of the Day

I started out writing a rant about the apparent unfairness of comparing Michael Moore to the late Leni Riefenstahl, it went like this:

The millionaire Marxist propagandist Michael Moore is constantly being compared to or even called the successor to Leni Riefenstahl. I believe that these labels are grossly unfair to the late Frau Riefenstahl.

Comrade Moore has, over the course of career, emitted a pottage of distortions and outright lies whereas Frau Riefenstahl in her most infamous film, Triumph of the Will, provides an accurate view of what was at the time the embodiment of the socialist ideal, the mass of uniform drones robotically marching in blind obedience to a single will as embodied in the leader. As one of the unacknowledged predecessors of the Fuherer, Woodrow Wilson, put it: "Conformity will be the only virtue and any man who refuses to conform will have to pay the penalty."

It was in that film that Frau Liefenstahl gave us four hours, FOUR F***ING HOURS, of a boring but accurate display of souless conformity. That damned thing literally put me to sleep.

Needless to say after the fall of the NSDAP from power the present day left found it necessary to tone down the external indicators of ideological conformity. Even though the massive formations of well-bathed and smartly uniformed drones have been replaced by an undisciplined mob of hygenically-challenged and ragged savages, the ultimate goal remains the same, the destruction of a free civilization and erection of a collectivist hive state subject to a single will.

It was at this point that I realized that if I saw the issue in terms of their ultimate goal, the destruction of civilization, that I was in error in standing up for Frau Liefenstahl.

In the immortal words of Emily Littella: Never mind.

Thought for the Day

Daily Affirmations for the Inner Pirate

Sunday:

"If I must violently put down a mutiny today, it is not because I am a bad person or that I am not worthy of love; it is because my crew are a bunch of yellow-bellied, lily-livered sons-of-whores--and I am mean enough, ruthless enough, and dog gone it, people fear me."

Real Progress

From WFTV News:

MIAMI, Fla. -- Cuban President Fidel Castro's granddaughter, who fled to America in 1993, has become an U.S. citizen.

Alina Salgado, 26, is the daughter of Alina Fernandez, Castro's daughter living in exile in the United States.

Salgado was sworn in at the Miami Beach Convention Center on Wednesday, among 6,000 people who became Americans during two naturalization ceremonies. She refused to comment.

"I want to keep my life private and personal," Salgado said in a telephone interview.

Um, okay.

Um...

I keep thinking that the thirty year old movie ZARDOZ would be a neat metaphor for certain aspects of the present political and cultural situation. But I think I need to think about it some more before writing a rant on the subject.

I also saw this year's SOUTH PARK Christmas episode. (Episode 814: Woodland Critter Christmas)

If I wasn't an atheist I'd say that those guys (Parker and Stone) are going to burn for it. I'll have to tape it the next time it is shown. (Insert Evil Grin Here)

Just to fill in for my lack of activity on this blog I will now present a "Daily Affirmation for your Inner Pirate":

Thursday:

"I will express my feelings today. I will not hide them behind my eyepatch. My eyepatch is not a mask for my feelings, but rather a small swatch of leather that covers a hideous scar."

We now return you to your scheduled reality.

Quote of the Day

From Schlock Mercenary, December 15, 2004:

"Hey, with nano-spandex one size really does fit all."

-- Lieutenant Ellen Foxworthy.

My Horoscope

From The Onion, December 15, 2004:

Sagittarius: (Nov. 22—Dec. 21)

It's often hard to say goodbye, but that doesn't excuse your practice of throwing down a smoke bomb and escaping in the confusion.

Quote of the Day

From the Schlock Mercenary strip of Sunday December 12, 2004:

Okay, you've crossed a line when I need a thesaurus to follow your flattery. OUT WITH IT.

-- Ob'enn Emperor

Howard didn't actually lay the label of Emperor on the character but he is sitting on a throne and is wearing a uniform in the imperial shade of purple.

Okay, I also had to look up "Rhadamanthine":

Rhad·a·man·thine: Strictly and uncompromisingly just.

"Shouldn't You Be Frying Something?"

I've come to the conclusion that apart from his species, the character of Invader Zim is essentially the idealized form of the complete modern utopian agitator.

Like the modern utopian agitator, Zim embodies supreme arrogance combined with supreme ignorance, a total dependence on the technology created by others, and a level of personal ability barely suitable for working in the fast food industry. As one the leaders of the Irkan Empire, Almighty Tallest Purple once asked Zim, "shouldn't you be frying something?"

And what can I say about the Irkans?

They not only militarised their society in the manner dreamed about by various utopians, but they have also gone beyond those archmilitarists, the ancient Spartans, in completely removing the family from the social structure altogether. Zim's first words upon being decanted from the womb-machine thingy were, "I love you cold robotic arm."

Of course having achieved the utopian dream of totally regimenting their own society, the Irkans then proceed to indulge in that other annoying habit of practicing utopians, the conquest and ruthless exploitation of their neighbors.

Invader Zim, having been sent to Earth so he wouldn't foul-up Operation Impending Doom II the way he wrecked Operation Impending Doom I, regards himself to be grossly superior to the inhabitants (that's us) even though every one of his schemes to effect a takedown of human society is thwarted by his next door neighbor, Dib, a boy who has seen too many episodes of The X-Files.

If it weren't for the well documented effects of various utopian schemes, the various efforts of our own home-grown utopians to impose their will upon us would be almost as funny.

Quote of the Day

"Conformity will be the only virtue and any man who refuses to conform will have to pay the penalty."

-- President Woodrow Wilson (HT: Dr. John Ray)

And some people wonder why I don't like Democrats.

The good doctor has more to say about the American Progressive influence on European National Socialism.

Another Opinion

A couple of weeks ago I wrote as a Thought of the Day:

The homeowner who shoots an violent intruder isn't only defending his own home and family but also the homes and families of what would have been the intruder's future victims.

In response to a call for the restoration of the right of self defence in the United Kingdom, Glenn Reynolds wrote:

I agree. In fact, as self-defense against burglars generates positive exernalities, by reducing the number of burglars, and their willingness to break into homes which might be occupied (thus reducing the risk that people will suffer Mr. Symonds' fate), there's a good economic argument that it ought to be not simply tolerated, but actively encouraged and even subsidized.

The individuals who perform home invasion robberies and other violent crimes have chosen to act as though they were predatory animals. In doing so they have deprived us of all other options but to identify and deal with them as such.

Quote of the Day

From Schlock Mercenary, December 5, 2004:

The grace of God knows no bounds, but my mercy has some practical limitations.

-- The Reverend.

Now What?

Oliver Stone is at it again:

OLIVER Stone plans to explore the possibility of an affair between former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and President Ronald Reagan in his next movie.

Suggestion to Hollywood: Instead of blowing (so to speak) another hundred-plus million dollars on another cinematic clusterf**k by Oliver Stone, try investing in something that is actually entertaining.

For example: A darkly humorous tale set in an official science fiction role playing game universe.

(Yes, I'm still working on chapter twenty...)

Thought for the Day

A mere pacifist, one who distains violence without engaging in political action, is simply a moral parasite in a free nation. On the other hand a politically active pacifist, one who uses his vote or an elective office to interfere with the prosecution of violent criminals and the defense of a free nation, is a traitor who cloaks his actions in the shroud of righteousness.

Well Hello...Oh...Never Mind...

Film Threat has a go at Alexander:

The historical military epic genre has had its ups and downs in the last decade or so. Braveheart won Oscars out the yin yang, as did Gladiator, while Troy was somewhat less well-received. One thing you could say positively about all of these films, however, was the fact that they contained a hefty amount of combat. Not so “Alexander,” which features perhaps 25 minutes of actual battle footage in its 176 minute running time, and the bulk of that early on during the Battle of Gaugamela. What there is of it is well shot, but it doesn’t really amount to anything we haven’t seen before. The rest of the time, the film drones on and on as each character has to give voice to his long-winded feelings, punctuated by the doddering Ptolemy reminding us of what a Great Man Alexander was. Maybe it’s just me, but it seems like a movie celebrating the life of the greatest military conqueror the world has ever known should feature a bit more conquering.

Could it that Mr. Stone has, you know, issues?

Wishful Thinking

There is a an apparently really, really, really neat 45 minute film of Mirage III fighters of the Swiss Air Force practicing low level flying and dogfights over the Alps titled Vols Blancs. (No, I don't read French.)

A short excerpt (36 MB) of it can be found here.

The problem is that it has only been recently released and is not available from Amazon .com and is only available in Europe.

This would make a really neat gift for Christmas or my non-birthday. Hint, Hint, Hint.

Aren't You Happy This Really Didn't Happen?

Whatever presents "The 10 Least Successful Holiday Specials of All Time." (HT: Instapundit)

Here's one:

Ayn Rand's A Selfish Christmas (1951)

In this hour-long radio drama, Santa struggles with the increasing demands of providing gifts for millions of spoiled, ungrateful brats across the world, until a single elf, in the engineering department of his workshop, convinces Santa to go on strike. The special ends with the entropic collapse of the civilization of takers and the spectacle of children trudging across the bitterly cold, dark tundra to offer Santa cash for his services, acknowledging at last that his genius makes the gifts -- and therefore Christmas -- possible. Prior to broadcast, Mutual Broadcast System executives raised objections to the radio play, noting that 56 minutes of the hour-long broadcast went to a philosophical manifesto by the elf and of the four remaining minutes, three went to a love scene between Santa and the cold, practical Mrs. Claus that was rendered into radio through the use of grunts and the shattering of several dozen whiskey tumblers. In later letters, Rand sneeringly described these executives as "anti-life."

And then there's:

The Lost Star Trek Christmas Episode: "A Most Illogical Holiday" (1968)

Mr. Spock, with his pointy ears, is hailed as a messiah on a wintry world where elves toil for a mysterious master, revealed to be Santa just prior to the first commercial break. Santa, enraged, kills Ensign Jones and attacks the Enterprise in his sleigh. As Scotty works to keep the power flowing to the shields, Kirk and Bones infiltrate Santa's headquarters. With the help of the comely and lonely Mrs. Claus, Kirk is led to the heart of the workshop, where he learns the truth: Santa is himself a pawn to a master computer, whose initial program is based on an ancient book of children's Christmas tales. Kirk engages the master computer in a battle of wits, demanding the computer explain how it is physically possible for Santa to deliver gifts to all the children in the universe in a single night. The master computer, confronted with this computational anomaly, self-destructs; Santa, freed from mental enslavement, releases the elves and begins a new, democratic society. Back on the ship, Bones and Spock bicker about the meaning of Christmas, an argument which ends when Scotty appears on the bridge with egg nog made with Romulan Ale.

Filmed during the series' run, this episode was never shown on network television and was offered in syndication only once, in 1975. Star Trek fans hint the episode was later personally destroyed by Gene Roddenberry. Rumor suggests Harlan Ellison may have written the original script; asked about the episode at 1978's IgunaCon II science fiction convention, however, Ellison described the episode as "a quiescently glistening cherem of pus."

What can I say? I have a thing for in jokes.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled reality.

My Horoscope

From The Onion of December 1, 2004:

Sagittarius: (Nov. 22—Dec. 21)

You've long sought the solitary life of the lighthouse keeper, but it turns out that most of those things are built at the entrances to subdivisions these days.

Silly Thought

References to Alexander will probably start showing up as callbacks at future showings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

The next showing in the Twin Cities area will be at the Riverview Theatre this coming Saturday at Midnight.

And if you meet any of the local cast and support crew, do not mention that Les has a birthday next week.

Okay?