Category Archives: Politics

Germans Retreat in Fear of Islamo-Nazis

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A mere 70 some years after many Jews no doubt told each other, “Careful not to piss off the Nazis.  It might antagonize them” we see the German government ceding to the Jihadis’ wishes.  No doubt this will be a big help in bringing “Peace In Our Time”.

Mozart’s Idomeneo, re di Creta (K. 366) was written in 1780, and premiered in Munich in 1781.  225 years later, it has become politically incorrect– apparently banned in Germany until further notice.  My! How we have progressed.

LONDON (Reuters)
Berlin security officials had warned that staging the opera “Idomeneo” would pose an “incalculable security risk.”

The controversy centered on a scene in which King Idomeneo is shown on stage with the severed heads of Buddha, Jesus, Mohammad and the sea god Poseidon.

This Mozart was an unusual fellow.  Here’s a background of the offending opera.  You can see it performed for yourself, or arrange a community showing.

On a slightly interesting side note;  Mozart died in December of 1791– the same month in which our United States Bill of Rights was ratified.  Both, it seems, are unpopular today among idiots.

Quote of the day–Richard Armour

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Politics, it seems to me, for years, or all too long, has been concerned with right or left instead of right or wrong.

Richard Armour
[At no time in my memory has this been more clear than since September 11, 2001.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Adolf Hitler

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The size of the lie is a definite factor in causing it to be believed, for the vast masses of the nation are in the depths of their hearts more easily deceived than they are consciously and intentionally bad.  The primitive simplicity of their minds renders them a more easy prey to a big lie than a small one, for they themselves often tell little lies but would be ashamed to tell a big one.

Adolf Hitler
[I was reminded of this by the weekend spectacle of Mr. “I did not have sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.”–Joe]

Mandating gun ownership

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Two different people (Dave and Stephanie) have sent me this link so I really should post about it. The gist of the article is the following:

All Americans have the right to bear arms.  Some towns have even gone as far as to require each household to have a gun.   Now a small Idaho town is contemplating a similar idea– it’s called the Civil Emergencies Ordinance. And although gun ownership is just one piece of this ordinance, it’s the part that’s getting the most attention.

“We’ve blessed to be a fairly rural area of the state, so we don’t have a lot of crime and I think we’d like to keep it that way,” said Lee Belt, Greenleaf city clerk.

Drive about 10 minutes west of Caldwell and you’ll run into Greenleaf, Idaho, population 860.  If city council member Steve Jett has his way, each head of household that can legally own a gun, will.  Along with that they’re encouraged to have ammunition and appropriate training.

Aside from hunting I sort of think of guns as flush toilets. They aren’t something that is particularly appealing on their own merits but they do a good job of disposing of human waste. I think every home should have at least one. It should be keep clean and functional. Everyone in the house should know how to use it or if they are too small to use it they should be keep away from it so they don’t get hurt.

For the city to mandate, with certain exceptions, gun ownership is sort of like mandating flush toilets. Are people so stupid that they don’t recognize the benefits of flush toilets? No. And people aren’t so stupid they don’t recognize the benefits of gun ownership either. The problem is the anti-gun bigots of the world make it socially uncomfortable in some circles to own guns. What needs to be done is to make those bigots social outcasts. It may be that this proposed ordinance will help make those bigots more obvious and hence it could be that it is a “good thing”. But in general it makes me just a little bit uncomfortable that government is getting involved in something like this.

I first saw this article at Saysuncle and Alphecca.

Clash of Civilizations

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This is my listening material for my trip to and from home (and then some) this weekend. Read a quote from it here:

“It is Islam, a different civilisation whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power. The problem for Islam is not the CIA or the US Department of Defence. It is the West, a different civilisation whose people are convinced of the universality of their culture and believe that their superior, if declining, power imposes on them the obligation to extend that culture throughout the world. These are the basic ingredients that fuel conflict between Islam and the West”.

The Amazon reviews are just as intriguing:

This is the eminent Professor Huntinton’s magnum opus, and it deserves to be read. No one can profess an understanding of modern global politics without studying this masterful work which was written in 1996. It remains a treasury of prophetic insights for our present day.

Of particular interest are the following: Chapter II, Part 5, “The Islamic Resurgence, Chapter IV Part 9, “Islam and the West” and Part 10 “Islam’s Bloody Borders.”

Huntington’s immense learning does not leave him optimistic. On the final page he writes: “On a worldwide basis Civilization seems in many respects to be yielding to barbarism, generating the image of an unprecedented phenomenon, a global Dark Ages, possibly descending on humanity.”

Keep in mind that this book was published in 1998 (and supposedly written in 1996)–years before 9-11!

Thoughts on illegal Immigration

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I haven’t put much effort into the topic but I keep thinking there must be a better way than a fence or trying to catch them once they have made their way 20 miles or more inside the border.

Can’t this be broken down in to a simple exercise in controlling a “black market”? It seems to me that if there were no minimum wage, welfare, free schooling, and no guaranteed health care the immigration problem would go away. Employers in this country have to pay a “tax” for domestic, legal, labor. It’s just like a tax on anything else. As soon as the tax rate on a marketable product goes above about 15% the government ends up creating a black market for the product.

In other words I suspect the government could solve the immigration crisis by repealing laws and spending less money rather than trying to come up with more complex government solutions to a problem they created to begin with.

Quote of the day–Stephen Harper

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We can’t just jump into the dark and make conclusions without facts. That’s how we got the gun registry in the first place. That’s how we spent a billion dollars on a policy that didn’t prevent the tragedy.

Stephen Harper
Prime Minister of Canada
September 16, 2006
$1-billion didn’t prevent tragedy
[I have Just One Question for Canadians.–Joe]

Quote of the day–William F. Buckley, Jr.

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The state is a divine institution. Without it we have anarchy, and the lawlessness of anarchy is counter to the natural law: so we abjure all political theories which view the state as inherently and necessarily evil. But it is the state which has been in history the principal instrument of abuse of the people, and so it is central to the conservatives’ program to keep the state from  accumulating any but the most necessary powers.

William F. Buckley, Jr.
[So why do conservatives think it is so important to get the state involved in sexual preferences and practices?–Joe]

Quote of the day–Emma Goldman

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If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.

Emma Goldman
[I’m not quite that cynical but it does have a grain of truth in it. Think McCain-Feingold.–Joe]

Magic vs. jihad

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Reader, friend, and Boomershooter Sean sent me a link to this article in the Weekly Standard, Return of the Tribes. It’s kind of a long article but all very interesting. Near the end is a section on Magic vs. jihad and from there Peters goes on to explain that “magic” is an essential part of dealing with people and how the magic of the forests and jungles in the hands of people that didn’t even have the wheel defeated the Muslim jihad that had swept through nearly every other culture the Muslim encountered:

The spread of Islam into Europe and Africa struck very different, but equally potent, barriers in the north and south. In Europe, it could not overcome a rival monotheist faith with its own universalist vision. In West Africa, Islam stopped, roughly five centuries ago, when it left the deserts and grasslands to enter the African forest, that potent domain of magic.

It should excite far more interest than it has that a warrior faith with an unparalleled record of conquest and conversion dead-ended when it reached the realms of illiterate tribes that had not mastered the wheel: In the forests of sub-Saharan Africa, Islam could not conquer, could not convert, and could not convince. On their own turf, local beliefs proved more powerful than a faith that had swept over “civilized” continents.

His thesis is that essentially all people need magic in their lives. In our country we have our own substitutes for it. As Sean rightly surmised this would push a button of mine. Magic???? We don’t need to stinking magic! Well… maybe I don’t but most people do and failure to take this into account will result in unexpected results when you deal with them.

As Barb points out at times I am frequently bewildered at the unexpected results when I deal with people. Apparently it’s not that they are stupid, as I would like to claim, but that they believe in magic. I guess I can buy that. From airplane security to gun control to socialized medicine they all believe in magic not realizing it’s nothing but a comforting illusion.

Michael Moore selects another target

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From the Seattle PI:

TORONTO — First, General Motors. Then gun control, followed by George W. Bush. Now rabble-rousing filmmaker Michael Moore has turned his irreverent camera on health care in America.

Socialized medicine will be his inevitable conclusion.

“Michael Moore is a political activist with a track record for sensationalism. He has no intention of being fair and balanced,” Johnson said.

Yup.

Utah Supreme Court Justices Domonstrate Ability to Read

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Here’s something you don’t see– a gun ban struck down on constitutional grounds, thoughbeit a state constitution:

“The Utah Supreme Court on Friday struck down a ban on guns at the University of Utah, saying campus officials cannot adopt a policy that runs counter to state law.”

Did I read that right?  State institutions cannot enact policies in violation of the constitution?  This is groundbreaking stuff (well, outside the issue of public funding for Maplethorpe or Piss Christ exhibits, et al, being claimed as “free speech” elsewhere).

Here is the pertinent language out of Utah, courtesy of the Second Amendment Foundation:

Utah Constitution Article I, Section 6

The individual right of the people to keep and bear arms for security and defense of self, family, others, property, or the state, as well as for other lawful purposes shall not be infringed; but nothing herein shall prevent the Legislature from defining the lawful use of arms.

Take note that security and defense of self, family, others, property, or the state are mentioned as the primary reason why the right to keep and bear arms should be protected.  That blows the whole “Sporting Purposes” test concept all to hell, doesn’t it?  But Utah reserves the right to define “lawful use”, like, I guess, not allowing shooting at your local community range at 03:00 for instance, without an effective sound suppressor.  That makes sense.

And “…defense of…property”?  There’s an obscure concept.

Now, if we could only get the several states to recognize the U.S. Constitution, it wouldn’t matter what any state constitution says about the keeping and bearing of arms (unless I am mistaken, the U.S. Constitution prevents, ostensibly, your home state legislature from banning newspapers, forcing Catholics to wear crucifix arm bands, for example, or reinstating slavery, but maybe someone could correct me on that).

The NRA linked to the story also, but had little to say about it as of this writing.

Psychology of Holocaust deniers & 9/11 deniers

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I was thinking all morning about posting on this subject, then a pen pal in Israel, Howard, a marksmanship instructor for the IDF, sent me an e-mail along the same lines.  I therefore can simply post the exchange I had with him:

From: Howard in Israel
Sent: Monday, September 11, 2006 9:46 AM
To: GPOSUMMARY
Subject: Fw: Headlines and Editorials

Friends:

The other night Israeli TV news reported that a recent survey in the USA determined that a third of all Americans believe that there was US government complicity in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.  I find it hard to believe.  I also find it hard to believe that a group of 75 (?) university professors say the evidence of such complicity is undeniable.

If the TV report is correct, all I can do is shake my head in disbelief.

Howard
—————————————————————————–

To which I replied:

Funny you should mention that.  I was just commenting to my wife this morning that I believed I had identified a parallel between Holocaust deniers and 9/11 deniers.  Yes, it is true that there are a number of Americans, many of them college professors and administrators, who are touting the notion that the twin towers were brought down in a “controlled demolition” and the Pentagon was hit with an American cruise missile.

My hypothesis is that, just as Holocaust deniers are the very ones who agree with the Nazi’s “Final Solution”, so too are the 9/11 deniers the very same people who hate capitalism and especially international free trade.  To put it another way, they agree with the premises of the terrorists, though their rationalizations may be slightly different.

I’m no psychologist, and I cannot begin to explain why those who most agree with the anti-Semitic premises for the Holocaust would be the ones most likely to deny that it happened, or that those who most agree that Western capitalism is the root of all evil in the world would deny that the attack on the World Trade Center was perpetrated by anti-Western, anti-capitalists, but I find this fascinating.

Lyle

————————

Update, 9/12/:

Lyle:
“Fascinating” is the politest term used so far.
Howard

————————

They just lost another soldier this morning in Gaza.  He isn’t joking at all about any of this.

Quote of the day–Henry Ward Beecher

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The worst thing in this world, next to anarchy, is government.

Henry Ward Beecher
[Which is why we are supposed to have a limited government with enumerated powers.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Dale Carnegie

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When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion.

Dale Carnegie

Quote of the day–Clayton Cramer

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Osama bin Laden and his fellow jihadis may well have figured out that the only way that they can continue to feel good about their place in the world is by reducing the West to the same level of desperate impoverishment as the Arab world. This also explains the left’s alliance with bin Laden almost from the beginning–they also share this resentment that the West isn’t desperately poor (but not enough to give up their private jets and Ferraris).

Clayton Cramer
September 3, 2006
A Dark Thought as We Approach The Fifth Anniversary of 9/11

Quote of the day–Donald Rumsfeld

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It was a time when a certain amount of cynicism and moral confusion set in among western democracies, when those who warned about a coming crisis, the rise of fascism and Nazism, they were ridiculed or ignored.

…

This enemy is serious, lethal and relentless. But this is still not well recognized or fully understood. It seems that in some quarters, there is more of a focus on dividing our country than acting with unity against the gathering threats.

Donald Rumsfeld
August 29, 2006
Voice Of America News August 30, 2006

Rumsfeld reporting

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It’s interesting how the different media organizations spin things. This particular time it is Rumsfeld that gets run through the spin cycle of the media washing machine.

Forbes mentions the lessons of history in regards to Hitler:

In remarks prepared for delivery to the American Legion’s national convention, Rumsfeld recited what he called the lessons of history, including the failed efforts to appease the Adolf Hitler regime in the 1930s.

CNN noticed that too and goes further:

Addressing several thousand veterans at the American Legion’s national convention, Rumsfeld recited what he called the lessons of history, including the failed efforts to appease the Adolf Hitler regime in the 1930s.

“I recount this history because once again we face the same kind of challenges in efforts to confront the rising threat of a new type of fascism” he said.

…

Rumsfeld recalled a string of recent terrorist attacks, from the 9/11 attacks to bombings in Bali, London and Madrid, and said it should be obvious to anyone that terrorists must be confronted, not appeased.

The Seattle Times didn’t mention the above and focuses on:

“They are actively manipulating the media in this country” by, for example, falsely blaming U.S. troops for civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, he said.

“They can lie with impunity,” he said, while U.S. troops are held to a high standard of conduct.

Rumsfeld made similar points later, in remarks prepared for delivery at a Reno, Nev., convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

“The enemy lies constantly — almost totally without consequence,” he told the veterans group.

And from the UK again no mention of the parallels of the fascism of the 30’s with the fascism of today, just about the media being manipulated:

‘The enemy lies constantly — almost totally without conscience,’ Rumsfeld said. ‘They portray our cause as a war on Islam when in fact the overwhelming majority of victims of their terrorism have been thousands and thousands of innocent Muslims.’

Similar oversights occur in most of the media reports and Democrat commentators either ignore it (Harry Reid) or call it absurd (Stephen Elliott) without even giving us their reasoning. But one shouldn’t be surprised by this. Expecting them to reason, let alone articulate it, is like expecting a dog to be able to drive a car. They may think they are doing just fine but they will very shortly crash and drawing the unwanted attention of the entire world to their deficiencies.

Quote of the day–Winston Churchill

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Some men change their party for the sake of their principles; others their principles for the sake of their party.

Winston Churchill

Who cares what the founding fathers thought?

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That’s the point of this editorial. Okay. Fine. All you have to do then is amend the constitution. Just don’t pretend it doesn’t exist.

You can’t get the votes to amend the constitution? Tough. Your bright ideas must not have been all that bright then. Your options are now rather limited. You can move to another country more to your liking. Maybe you can find one with the all the socialist trimmings you whine about not having. Want a few bucks for the one-way plane ticket out of the country? I’ll be glad to contribute to you leaving. Another option is you can start a revolution and overthrow the existing government by means of violence. Your choice Mr. Kurlansky. What’s it going to be?