Think Of It As Evolution In Action

From The Corner at NRO via The Instapundit:

CPT does not advocate the use of violent force to save lives of its workers should they be kidnapped, held hostage, or caught in the middle of a conflict situation.

Four members of CPT (Christian Peacemaker Teams) were kidnapped by terrorists in Iraq. But given that pacifists are at best essentially useless to Humanity in General, this would really not be an actual problem. After all the terrorists could have kidnapped and eventually murder four actually innocent people.

The CPT website had an interesting question at the head of its page:

What would happen if Christians devoted the same discipline and self-sacrifice to nonviolent peacemaking that armies devote to war?

The answer for those of us who live in the real world is that Christianity would effectively become extinct.

Now, what would the death toll of CPT volunteers in Iraq be if all of them were to have their throats cut by Allah's own death squad?

It would be an acceptable one.
_

Quote of the Day

The Guru has been kind enough to pass long this quote from President Theodore Roosevelt:

"In the first place we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the man's becoming in very fact an American, and nothing but an American ... There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag, and this excludes the red flag, which symbolizes all wars against liberty and civilization, just as much as it excludes any foreign flag of a nation to which we are hostile ... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language ... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."

The Guru also had this to say about a certain municipality:

It is an axiom that people get the government they deserve. This certainly seems true of San Francisco.

_

Rant of the Day

I'm posting this in the morning dead thread over at Little Green Footballs:

Gary Trudeau and Ted Rall represent respectively the high and low ends of the visual component of the "intellectual" branch of what I will henceforth call the Kool Kommie Klan.

We must remember that Socialism is essentially a Master/Slave ideology. If you pardon me for quoting the First Trustifarian: From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs. And for the socialists, as with the antebellum slaveholders, the needs of the masters will always be much greater than the needs of the slaves.

But now the socialist master class, both here in the United States and abroad, now see themselves being dispossessed of what according to their ideology is rightfully theirs. Control of their slaves and the products of slave labor. What should not be a surprise to us is that the response of the socialist master class and their supporters is in many ways similar to the actions of the antebellum slaveholder class and their supporters.

Those who reject the chains of the Left are subjected to public ridicule and slander by the self-styled intellectuals and subject to physical violence by the goon squad, with the ski-mask replacing the white sheet as the attire of choice.

If you will pardon me for the use of shocking language, to the master class of the Left, we who reject the chains of Socialism are (regardless of our actual race) no better than a bunch of "Uppity Niggers." It should be no surprise to us that they are treating us as such.

What are your questions on this block of instruction?
_

Our Motto Is Dorkness Now!

The latest Dork Tower on blogging.

Read it here.

Sigh...
_

Quote of the Day

Soviet Russian ambassador to Ukraine, Viktor Chernomyrdin, on Stalin's famine massacre of Ukranians:

"We're not going to apologise... there is nobody to apologise to."

Hat Tip to the Corner at NRO.
_

Quote of the Day

John Bergstrom (a.k.a. Varmint) said on Little Green Footballs:

Sometimes I wish my government were as all powerful and ruthless as the parnoid liberals think.

Me too.
_

Think Of It As Socialism In Action

Or how not to run a manned space program:

The day after Lin Biao's death, Li Zhengjun and Xu Peigen were at Mount Zijinshan Observatory, Nanjing, to discuss construction of a special astronaut-training machine. Immediately thereafter, Unit 714 came under special scrutiny. '714' was a homonym for 'armed revolt'. The investigators concluded that it must be connected to the plotters in some way. Even though equipped with only one telephone, the security special case team decided that Unit 714 was the headquarters for the alleged coup d'etat. In retrospect it is obvious that the office could not have been connected with the alleged plot, since Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai had signed the order to establish the office, but not Lin Biao. Such considerations did not deter the investigators and the leaders of the unit were detained for sustained interrogation.

Nevertheless the project was not cancelled and those that remained continued their work. The astronauts reported for training by November 1971. The immediate problem was that the budget was not in hand to fulfil the training plans. Major General Yang Guoyu and State Planning Committee Director Yu Qiuli were in charge of the material supply for the project. The spacecraft mock-up, housed in a large hall, was built of wood and cardboard. Astronaut food in toothpaste tubes was being produced, while the astronauts were supposed to undergo their strenuous training regime living only on steamed bread.

Qian Xuesen himself was unwilling to bring up the issue of provision of necessary funds with Zhou Enlai. Finally Yu Qiuli attended a meeting where Mao himself was presented with the need for additional funds. Mao reacted by blaming the project staff for inadequate moral resolve and declared that the nation must take care of terrestrial needs first. Space could come later. Faced with no budget, and pilots that had not been able to fly for months, the astronauts were released to return to their units. On May 13, 1972, the final staff member of Office 714 returned to his unit and China's first manned space project was officially wound up.

Apparently the initial design for a Chinese manned spacecraft would basically be a clone of the American Gemini system.

Sometimes it really helps when the enemy is being stupid.
_

Announcement

The Dumb Plumber has moved over to blogspot.

Why he calls himself a "dumb" plumber is something that is beyond logical understanding, for example:

Chris Ewen’s letter to the editor on Friday correctly points out that most of the ‘children’ killed by guns are actually, gang members, thugs, rapists, murderers and muggers, whose numbers shouldn’t be combined with innocent children to ‘fluff’ statistics. This is a very important observation and shouldn’t be taken lightly. Since children will always be killed by guns through accident, mishandling, and gross stupidity, these losses should be minimized by caring parents and not lawmakers. On the other hand, the aforementioned murderers, gangsters, etc., should be required to attend target practice, so that their intended victims will be sporting toe tags instead of filling the jails and hospitals at taxpayer expense, after the inevitable confrontations.

Hopefully the improved aim will severely reduce their numbers and ultimately improve the prospects for the rest of us.

Oh... sarcasm...

_

And Now For Something Completely Different

John Bergstrom Presents:

The Maureen Dowd Dating Game!

We now return you to your regularly scheduled reality.
_

A Question

Have you ever noticed that most so-called intellectuals can't tell the difference between the institution of government and a band of brigands?
_

So Anyway

The lady whose basement I am living in had some people over to help clean up her part of the house. One of them, without bothering to ask permission went ahead and disconnected the cable modem and network router. We only got the connection back up tonight.

Needless to say it has not been a pleasant weekend.
_

A Question

Dr. Sanity raises the following question about the Democrats:

What does it take to get serious about the fact that we are fighting for our survival as a civilization?

I would as a guess give the answer that the Democrats are fully well aware of the fact that we are fighting for the survival of civilization and that they are for all practical purposes on the opposite side.

Civilization in both the moral and economic aspects is based on the principle of consent. But since productive people cannot tolerate any form of sustained parasitism, those who seek to exist as parasites must destroy the society of consent and replace it with a political order where the parasites would enjoy a superior status over the productive.

One form of the rule of the parasites is called Islam, another form is called Socialism.

(And I should point out here that Socialism is toxic to humans whether it is practiced by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union or the National Socialist German Worker's Party. It doesn't matter if grape flavoring or orange flavoring is added to the toxic brew -- poison is poison.)

(And another thing: What part of "National Socialist German Worker's Party" do some university produced drones not understand?)

The good doctor goes on to say:

If I saw an individual behaving as our country's leaders in Congress are behaving right now, I would have to conclude that they are acutely suicidal and represent an imminent danger to all of us.

Absolutely God-damned right.
_

Someone Else's Thought For The Day

Violence breeds violence -- but so can nonviolence.

-- Dr. Helen Smith

Read the whole piece here.
_

Somebody May Be Seeing The Fnords

In the comments section of Dr. Sanity's discussion on BDS, Ric Locke puts forth another possible factor in the possible origin of Bush Derangment Syndrome:

BDS sufferers are overwhelmingly members of the intelligentsia, at least as self-defined: academics, "artists", and the commentariat, and related wannabees. They have in common membership in a subculture that is, geographically, largely confined to cities and the Northeast, and tends strongly to be passed down in families.

George W. Bush had every opportunity to become one of them. His father is a member in good standing of that culture; his mother is a Pierce. Absent malign influences, a reasonable person could have looked at young George and predicted that he would grow up to be, for all practical purposes, John Kerry.

Instead he went off and actually joined the "red staters", complete with religiosity and drawl. Apostasy always causes heartburn in the Faithful -- the fear that, if it happened to him, it could happen to them or their descendants, too. How could such a thing happen? Shun him! Shun him!

This reinforces the evidence that Leftism is for all practical purposes a religion.
_

Another Quiz

Numenorean


To which race of Middle Earth do you belong?
brought to you by Quizilla
_

And Then She...

Ann Coulter writes about the quality of the courage of Edward R. Murrow while ripping George Clooney a new terminal orifice (with a Hat Tip to Hog On Ice):

As even liberal reviewers have noted, it was hardly an act of bravery for Edward R. Murrow to attack McCarthy. The New York Times was attacking McCarthy, The New York Post was attacking McCarthy and The Washington Post was attacking McCarthy. Every known news outlet was attacking McCarthy. McCarthy was in a pitched battle for his life, his career and the fate of the nation. Murrow merely jumped on the liberal bandwagon -- and rather late in the game. (You want bravery? Try sitting all the way through "Solaris.")

I own the DVD of Soderbergh's version of SOLARIS. I usually play it with the commentary track on because I found the conversation between Steven Soderbergh and Jim Cameron on the making of the movie to far more interesting than the film itself.

For real bravery in sitting through a movie one should try viewing the orginal Soviet version of SOLARIS in one sitting. Of course Andrei Tarkovski's version of SOLARIS was by Soviet standards a good film, having not been cut in any way by the Soviet censors. Of course being (Les affects a Russian accent here) a good Soviet film, it was not subject to the aesthetic and editorial standards that were common outside of the Soviet Union. My personal theory on the origin of the film was that Mosfilm Studios was short about two hours and forty minutes in the science fiction quota in the current Five-Year Plan and turned to Tarkovski to fill the gap:

"Comrades, we are short one-hundred and sixty-five minutes in our science fiction quota! What shall we do?"

"Have Tarkovski fill it for us."

"But Tarkovski makes really dense and boring films!"

"Comrades! We must make every effort to heroically fulfill the goals of the Five-Year Plan!"

Or something like that.

Granted, the cinematography (apart from the cheesy effects sequences) was well done and Miss (or I suppose at the time, comrade) Natalya Bondarchuk comes across as being more talented and visually interesting than any of the current generation of Hollywood glamdroids, the original Soviet version of SOLARIS was just too damned long. A properly edited version would more closely resemble the Soderbergh version, except that the actors would actually have talent and would lack any visible signs of a trip to the plastic surgeon. (Something about Natascha McElhone's lips just says collagen injection with big ugly letters, this is something that just ruins a movie for me.)

Someone Else's Thought For The Day

From Australia:

If you don't like it here, Fuck Off!

Did I ever say that the Anglosphere Rules?

It bloody well should.
_

Thought for the Day

I just posted this thought in a comments section over at Political Yen/Yang on the nature of the Left:

They have an idea, it is to replace the society of social and economic consent that we live in with the social and economic primacy of the parasites over the productive. Or as their primary philosophical source (and founding trustifarian) put it, "from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs." And as there is no limit to the needs of the parasite masters there will be no limit on the burdens imposed on the productive slaves.

Poison is poison no matter how much grape flavoring one adds to it. They cannot avoid knowing that their ideal society is toxic to us and thus have no effective choice but to attack the opposition on trivial issues in order to head off a public examination of their basic ideological premises.

Political ideology is basically a means of giving the appearance of positive virtue to actions that are morally intolerable to the victims.

What are your questions on this block of instruction?
_

Another Quiz

You scored as Combat Infantry. Your a combat infantry soldier,a grunt, a dogface, a footslogger. While some say your common, your a really a disciplined person who realizes the importantce of working in a team, and in reality you and your comrades get most of the work done. This country needs more people like you. Your a brave selfless person. And I salute you. TEN-HUT!!! Combat Infantry 88% Engineer 81% Special Ops 75% Officer 69% Medic 63% Support Gunner 63% Artillery 38% Civilian 0% Which soldier type are you? created with QuizFarm.com

Islam In Action

Catholic World News report:

Jakarta, Nov. 08 (AsiaNews) - New violence has flared in Indonesia, in the town where three girls from a Christian school were decapitated on October 29, the AsiaNews service reports.

Two more girls were shot in the head in the evening of November 8 in Poso, in central Sulawesi-- a province marred by months of bloodshed, as Muslims have clashed with Christians. The two girls are in critical condition in a local hospital.

_