AMERICA'S EXPLODING BUDGET DEFICIT.

Over at Townhall.com, Mike Needham has a clear message for the GOP:

"BE BOLD, OR GO HOME."

"Over thirty years ago, in 1978, the United States government ran an annual deficit of $59 billion. In that year, a fiscally conservative legislative strategy might have been to cut $2 billion a week for the last seven months of the year. These “multiple bites at the apple” would have eventually, by year end, eliminated the deficit and actually resulted in a small surplus.
Much as the presidency of Barack Obama resembles that of Jimmy Carter, we are not in 1978. Our nation is at a tipping point and our fiscal situation is bleak. Today, we have a projected $1.65 trillion deficit. $61 billion is a mere drop in the bucket of red ink our nation is piling up literally by the minute.

Today, multiple $2 billion bites at the apple are woefully insufficient for the times we live in. Yet, according to Politico, Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) “are considering pushing forward a series of short-term continuing resolutions with targeted spending cuts that would be difficult for Democrats to oppose.”

Getting the $61 billion in cuts is an important trust-building measure between the American people and Washington – and the tea party activists and the Republican Party – since neither Washington nor Republicans have any credibility after the last ten years on the issue of spending. It is not, however, the only policy battle we must win this year.

Shortly, House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) will release the Republican budget for fiscal year 2012. It is vital this is a bold budget and conservatives must fight for boldness in the appropriations battles that will follow.

Sometime this spring, there will be a fight over whether to raise the debt limit. Conservatives must fight to have transformational policies attached to any legislation which raises the debt limit. Einstein’s definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result. We cannot have another clean increase of the debt limit this year, which would be the sixth such increase in the last four years.


....


Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said the Senate needed more time to consider H.R. 1 – the House spending bill which would cut $61 billion – since it was sent to the Senate on a Saturday. The question of time to consider H.R. 1 is a funny one considering the Senate’s first move after the House passed that legislation was to take a one-week vacation.

Last week, Senator Reid released an alternative that offered only a token $6 billion in cuts. It appears Senator Reid doesn’t have a real plan to cut spending. Enter Joe Biden. As you may recall, President Obama claims “Nobody messes with Joe.” Vice President Biden was tapped by President Obama to broker a deal between the House and Senate on the budget. With two weeks left on the clock until the next budget showdown, what does Joe do? He leaves for a five-day trip to Europe. I guess it’s tough to mess with him there.

There seems to be a pattern developing. In Wisconsin, when Democrats want to stall what Governor Walker is trying to do, they flee. Two weeks ago, faced with a continuing resolution passed by the House of Representatives, the Senate went on vacation. Today, Vice President Biden, tapped with brokering a compromise, leaves for Europe.

The House of Representatives has passed a modest $61 billion in spending cuts. These cuts pale in comparison to $474 billion in spending increases just since 2008. Now is not the time to be fouling off pitches. America demands and deserves bold leadership in Washington...."

In his first year in office, Obama oversaw a tripling of the already huge budget deficit from 459 billion US$ to 1.4 trillion US$, mainly as a result of the much-vaunted stimulus bill (ARRA), the takeover of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the Wall Street bailout and the Omnibus spending bill.

The budget deficit in 2010 was 1.294 trillion US. Together with interests this lifted the exising public debt from 11.9 trillion US$ to 13.8 trillion US$.

The 2011 budget deficit was scheduled to be around 1.48 trillion US$, as the federal budget foresaw expenses of 3.708 trillion dollar while revenues were expected to be 2.228 trillion US$. This would mean that at the end of 2011 the public debt would reach well beyond 15 trillion US$.

However, when in February of this year Obama released his 2012 Federal Budget, it appeared the projected 2011 deficit had been updated to 1.645 trillion US$, or around 165 billion dollars more.

The bipartisan CBO (Congressional Budget Office) itself projects significant debt increases as it sees only comparable budget deficits ahead - adding "give and take" something in the neighborhood of 1.3 trillion US$ on average to the national debt every year for the coming decade. This means that already in 2015 the debt will have reached the colossal level of 20 trillion US$.

It is only when you ponder these gigantic numbers that the folly of Boehners 61 billion dollar cuts becomes apparent. As for Harry Reid's 6 billion dollar cuts...

... I wonder how it is possible to even mention that and still be able to walk home without having taken a tar bath and plastered over with feathers? Just watch this video:





Check out that idiot Harry Reid. But the most "memorable" moment is of course the clip where CBS's Charles "Chip" Reid asks Obama "the total over those 10 years, the total debt is $7.2 trillion on top of the $14 trillion we already have. How can you say that we’re living within our means?"

And the reply from the POTUS is... is.... is......


"Well here, he,he,he,he here's a, let me be clear on what I am saying because, um, I'm not suggesting that we don't have to do more."


MY.

GOD.

Who killed the guys who insisted Bush was an idiot?


MFBB.

MARK STEYN ON THE FRANKFURT SHOOTINGS.

Mark Steyn sheds light on the killing of two US servicemen at Frankfurt Airport by a muslim. From the OC Register, March 6, 2011:

"According to Bismarck's best known maxim on Europe's most troublesome region, the Balkans are not worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier. Americans could be forgiven for harboring similar sentiments after the murder of two U.S. airmen in Germany by a Kosovar Muslim.

Remember Kosovo? Me neither. But it was big at the time, launched by Bill Clinton in the wake of his Monica difficulties: Make war, not love, as the boomers advise. So Clinton did – and without any pesky UN resolutions, or even the pretense of seeking them. Instead, he and Tony Blair and even Jacques Chirac just cried "Bombs away!" and got on with it. And the Left didn't mind at all – because, for a modern Western nation, war is only legitimate if you have no conceivable national interest in whatever war you're waging. Unlike Iraq and all its supposed "blood for oil," in Kosovo no one remembers why we went in, what the hell the point of it was, or which side were the good guys. (Answer: Neither.) The principal rationale advanced by Clinton and Blair was that there was no rationale. This was what they called "liberal interventionism," which boils down to: The fact that we have no reason to get into it justifies our getting into it.

A decade on, Kosovo is a sorta sovereign state, and in Frankfurt a young airport employee is so grateful for what America did for his people that he guns down U.S. servicemen while yelling "Allahu akbar!" The strange shrunken spectator who serves as president of the United States, offering what he called "a few words about the tragic event that took place," announced that he was "saddened," and expressed his "gratitude for the service of those who were lost" and would "spare no effort" to "work with the German authorities" but it was a "stark reminder" of the "extraordinary sacrifices that our men and women in uniform are making ..."

The passivity of these remarks is very telling. Men and women "in uniform" (which it's not clear these airmen were even wearing) understand they may be called upon to make "extraordinary sacrifices" in battle. They do not expect to be "lost" on the shuttle bus at the hands of a civilian employee at a passenger air terminal in an allied nation. But then I don't suppose their comrades expected to be "lost" at the hands of an army major at Fort Hood, to cite the last "tragic event" that "took place" – which seems to be the president's preferred euphemism for a guy opening fire while screaming "Allahu akbar!" But relax, this fellow in Frankfurt was most likely a "lone wolf" (as Senator Chuck Schumer described the Times Square Bomber) or an "isolated extremist" (as the president described the Christmas Day Pantybomber). There are so many of these "lone wolves" and "isolated extremists" you may occasionally wonder whether they've all gotten together and joined Local 473 of the Amalgamated Union of Lone Wolves and Isolated Extremists, but don't worry about it: As any Homeland Security official can tell you, "Allahu akbar" is Arabic for "Nothing to see here."

Bismarck's second best-known maxim on the region is that the Balkans start in the slums of Vienna. The Habsburg imperial capital was a protean "multicultural society" wherein festered the ancient grievances of many diverse peoples. Today, the Muslim world starts in the suburbs of Frankfurt. Those U.S. airmen were killed by Arid Uka, whose Muslim Albanian parents emigrated from Kosovo decades ago. Young Arid was born and bred in Germany. He is a German citizen who holds a German passport. He is, according to multicultural theory, as German as Fritz and Helmut and Hans. Except he's not. Not when it counts.

Why isn't he a fully functioning citizen of the nation he's spent his entire life in? Well, that's a tricky one.

OK, why is a Muslim who wants to kill Americans holding down a job at a European airport? That's slightly easier to answer. Almost every problem facing the Western world, from self-detonating jihadists to America's own suicide bomb – the multi-trillion dollar debt – has at its root a remorseless demographic arithmetic. In the U.S., the baby boomers did not have enough children to maintain their mid-20th century social programs. I see that recent polls supposedly show that huge majorities of Americans don't want any modifications to Medicare or Social Security. So what? It doesn't matter what you "want." The country's broke, and you can vote yourself unsustainable quantities of government lollipops all you like, but all you're doing is ensuring that when, eventually, you're obliged to reacquaint yourself with reality, the shock will be far more devastating and convulsive.

But even with looming bankruptcy America still looks pretty sweet if you're south of the border. Last week, the former director of the U.S. Census Bureau, Steve Murdock, told The Houston Chronicle that in Texas "it's basically over for Anglos." He pointed out that two out of every three children are already "non-Anglo," and that this gap will widen even further in the years ahead. Remember the Alamo? Why bother? America won the war, but Mexico won the peace. In the Lone Star State, Murdock envisions a future in which millions of people with minimal skills will be competing for ever fewer jobs paying less in actual dollars and cents than they would have earned in the year 2000. That doesn't sound like a recipe for social tranquility.

What's south of Europe's border? Why, it's even livelier. In Libya, there are presently one million refugees from sub-Saharan Africa whose ambition is to get in a boat to Italy. There isn't a lot to stop them. Between now and mid-century, Islam and sub-Saharan Africa will be responsible for almost all the world's population growth – and yet, aside from a few thousand layabout Saudi princes whoring in Mayfair, they will enjoy almost none of the world's wealth. Niger had 10 million people in 2000, and half-a-million of them were starving children. By 2010, they had 15 million, and more children were starving. By 2100, they're predicted to hit 100 million. But they won't – because it would be unreasonable to expect an extra 90 million people to stay in a country that can't feed a population a tenth that size. So they will look elsewhere – to countries with great infrastructure, generous welfare, and among the aging natives a kind of civilizational wasting disease so advanced that, as a point of moral virtue, they are incapable of enforcing their borders.

The nations that built the modern world decided to outsource their future. In simple economic terms, the arithmetic is stark: In America, the boomers have condemned their shrunken progeny to the certainty of poorer, meaner lives. In sociocultural terms, the transformation will be even greater. Bismarck, so shrewd and cynical about the backward Balkans, was also the father of the modern welfare state: When he introduced the old age pension, you had to be 65 to collect and Prussian life expectancy was 45. Now life expectancy has near doubled, you get your pension a decade earlier, and, in a vain attempt to make that deformed math add up, Bismarck's successors moved the old East/West fault line from the Balkans to the main street of every German city.

Americans sometimes wonder why, two decades after the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, the U.S. Army still lives in Germany. The day is approaching when they will move out – if only to avoid any more "tragic events" "taking place."

©MARK STEYN"

Now that I've got you in the mood - hopefully - you may want to check out the following video:






To cut a long story short, on the one hand the left has been waging a decade-long war to make whites reduce their fertility, either by:

* instilling in people's minds the phony worldview that humans are destroying the planet
* instilling in people's minds the false notion that whites are Earth's oppressors and that to atone for that, we must cede dominance to other races
* actively promoting non-reproductive forms of relationship
* actively promoting abortion


... while at the same time, they have successfully exported their non-workable political and economical theories across the globe.


* the political theories have led to the world's most oppressive regimes
* the economical theories have caused massive poverty, which in turn has led to overpopulation - the causal correlation between poverty and high fertility is well established


In short, had rightwing theorems on how to govern a state and how to run an economy been dominant, the world would have been a far, far better place. For instance, the great mass of African countries that now applied afrosocialism would have gotten richer and its populations would long since have stabilized.


The accomplishments of leftist ideologies can be summed up as follows: spreading unfreedom and poverty around, thereby contributing to overpopulation. Subsequently causing migration towards rich countries, which are predominantly white. After that, in all these countries facilitating the immigration influx from exactly those poor, unfree countries, at the expense of the economy of the rich ones.

No matter which way you turn it, whatever the left touches... goes wrong. Whatever they do, whatever they promote... goes wrong. Wherever leftist thoughts are applied or enforced... it goes wrong. Nazi Germany, mass starvation in Ukraine, the "Great Leap Forward", the Killing Fields, afrosocialism, nationalizations from Bolivia to Egypt, unsustainable welfare states, killing in the womb, freedom of speech under fire in courts from Canada over The Netherlands to Austria and beyond....

... whatever the left does, or proposes, or implements...


goes WRONG.


Its guilt for humanity's woes is DEVASTATING.



MFBB.

SATURDAY NIGHT THE WATERBOYS, ELASTICA.

The Waterboys with The Whole of the Moon.





Lead man Mike Scott is, afaik, the only consistent member of the band, and must have burned through a couple of tens of musicians. The Whole of... must be their archetypical early Waterboys song.


Elastica with Waking Up.




UK alternative rock band, London based. Frontwoman is Justine Frischmann, ex-Suede. Waking Up is from the debut album Elastica, released in 93.



MFBB.

SOME NEWS TIDBITS TO CHEW ON...

Still haven't noticed a certain pattern? Do you live on Phobos? Are you a horse? Or have you got Alzheimer?

Primo. From the New York Post:






Segundo. From FOX News:





A stepfather by the name of Mohammed Khan huh? Must be a coincidence.


Tertio. From Mail Online:





Uncle sez he was a devout muslim huh? Just like that? Is uncle laughing in our faces mayhaps?


Say out loud together with Outlaw Mike: islam is an insane, rotten, inhuman politico-religious totalitarian doctrine that makes monsters of men and women alike. And mohammed was a heinous paedophilic murderer. You're not speaking out loud with me? Then you must be either a follower of mohammed the heinous paedophilic murderer, or else you're at this very moment watching the inside of your rectum.


Meanwhile, on airports all over the globe:





Stole the pic over at Mike's America. Thanks Mike. Mike.



MFBB.

FIRST PRODUCTION F-35 TAKES TO THE AIR.

On February 25, 2011, the first production F-35 made its maiden flight:




The West's prime new tactical fighter, the fifth generation F-35 aka Lightning II, will come in three variants:






First there's the CTOL (Conventional Take-Off and Landing) variant, the F-35A, meant to replace ageing third generation fighters in the USAF and other air forces. It is the smallest of the three variants, yet it is the only one equipped with an internal cannon, the GAU-22/A. This is a 25 mm cannon, a development of the GAU-12 which is mounted on the USMC's AV-8B Harrier II, and which is primarily meant to engage ground targets.

Somewhat surprisingly for such an expensive aircraft, the F-35A is only expected to "match" the F-16 in maneuverability and instantaneous and sustained high-g performance. It should however vastly outperform it in stealth, payload, range on internal fuel, avionics, operational effectiveness, supportability, and survivability. It will have built in the functionality of the sniper pod, a device which today is mounted under the fuselage of, typically, third generation fighters like the F-16. The F-35 A variant is mainly intended to replace the USAF's "Fighting Falcon", beginning in 2013. Plans are that it should replace the A-10 Thunderbolt II starting in 2028, which not only seems impossibly far-fetched to me but also strange, since I cannot fathom how the slender airframe of the Lightning II could ever be capable of either operating from rugged airfields, or sustain the same battle damage an A-10 can take (and still be able to fly).


The F-35B is the short takeoff and vertical landing (STOVL) variant. It's similar in size to the A, and as such, equipped with a VTOL system as quaint as it is original, has less internal volume for fuel storage, armament, or avionics to detect and engage the enemy. Lift power is provided by a huge fan directly behind the cockpit, and a jet thrust that can be rotated downwards at the back:





This is how it works:





Plans are that the United States Marine Corps will purchase 340 F-35Bs to replace all current F/A-18 Hornet models (the A, B, C and D-variants), as well as its AV-8B Harrier II's.


Finally there's the F-35C, the Carrier variant. It has larger wings with foldable wingtip sections, stronger landing gear for not getting crippled on pitching flight decks, and larger wing and tail control surfaces for enhanced low-speed control. Of course a tailhook will be provided. With twice the range on internal fuel as an F/A-18C Hornet, the F-35C will be a worthy successor to the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet.

The United States Navy intends to buy 480 F-35Cs to replace its F/A-18A, B, C, and D Hornets, and backup the Super Hornets.



Nite.



MFBB.

IRENE KHAN IS A SCHTOOPID CUNT (2).

Almost to the date four years ago I posted the first "Irene Khan is a schtoopid cunt" post. Let's recap a little. Back then, she had been Secretary General of Amnesty International for six years, and two years previously, in 2005, she had publicly stated that:

"The USA, as the unrivalled political, military and economic hyperpower, sets the tone for governmental behaviour worldwide,..." "When the most powerful country in the world thumbs its nose at the rule of law and human rights, it grants a licence to others to commit abuse with impunity."

"The detention facility at Guantánamo Bay has become the gulag of our times, entrenching the practice of arbitrary and indefinite detention in violation of international law," she said. " Guantánamo evokes memories of Soviet repression."

In a perfect world, if the Secretary General of a once noble institution like Amnesty International publicly made a comment like that, he or she should resign immediately. Khan litterally stated that Gitmo was the Gulag of our times, which, apart from being a blatant lie, is the apex of hyperbole. Anyone who has delved even remotely in the history of the infamous Gulag Archipelago cannot but acknowledge that Khan's remark was infuriatingly dishonest, completely baseless, and an insult to the tens of millions of Gulag inmates and their relatives. Here's a short exerpt from my post back then:

"...Below you find a map of Cuba, with the exact location of the US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, in Cuba's southeastern corner. Cuba is an island with a surface of 110,860 sq km (sorry, I always have troubles with kloms/miles converting), or slightly smaller than Pennsylvania. The Naval Base comprises a small surface of some 45 square miles. The actual detention center consists of three camps, Delta, Iguana and X-Ray, which until now have received 775 detainees, of which as of today approximately 340 have been released (a couple of tens of them immediately returning to their jihad activities and ambushing an killing US and coalition troops) and a further 110 labeled "ready for release". That leaves around 325 inmates, of which some 70 will ultimately face trial, which means that it is only the status of the remaining 250 which remains unclear, read, they don't know how long they will be held. Generally, the highest number of detainees present at one time was around 500. For those sobbing and weeping over this horrendous fact I'd like to point out that German and Japanese POW's also didn't know how long they'd be held. However, public outrage over Obersturmbannfuehrer's Schweinkopf's sad fate shoveling horse shit in the desert of Nevada was less then because people realized a war was going on.






Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand below is a map of the former Soviet Union, surface 22 million kilometers or around 200 times Cuba, and the red specks represent the known prisoner complexes in the USSR. Keep in mind that one speck does not necessarily means one camp. The Mother of all Penal Networks would ultimately count 476 camps. The most notorious area of them all - at least the one known to the general public - was in Kolyma, in the desolate wastes of eastern Siberia. There, on a surface four times the size of France, around 100 camps were set up. The highest number of detainees held at one time is estimated at 5,000,000, or 10,000 times as many as in the "gulag of our times" - Americans are schoolboys. This peak was reached during the reign of Stalin, who actually used the Gulag system not only to get rid of political opponents but also as a means of keeping the populace in a permanent state of terror, a bit like George Bush is doing now.

(end of exerpt)


Why do I mention this right now? Well, perhaps it did not escape your attention, but for those who did not happen to read it, here's an interesting tidbit about Mrs. Khan:






Got that you lousy proletarian? Last year, Madame Khan bagged a severance payment of UK £533,103 from Amnesty International following her resignation from the organisation on 31 December 2009. This payment was in excess of four times her annual salary of £132,490 (!). On February 19, 2011, Peter Pack, chairman of AI's executive committee, defended the decision to pay such an outrageous sum as follows: "The payments to outgoing secretary general Irene Khan shown in the accounts of AI (Amnesty International) Ltd for the year ending March 31st 2010 include payments [were] made as part of a confidential agreement between AI Ltd and Irene Khan.... It is a term of this agreement that no further comment on it will be made by either party."


The irony is that, much to the chagrin of many first hour AI activists who doggedly and passionately did their utmost best to alleviate the plight of the planet's countless political prisoners (AI's core mission), Irene Khan deliberately tried to steer AI into a quintessential leftist dada: fighting "poverty". . I was never someone who feeds on conspiracy theories, but could it not be... could it not be that Khan, with this strange move, tried to steer away public attention for human rights abuses towards a less laden topic? Especially since THE OVERWHELMING MAJORITY OF HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES HAPPEN IN MUSLIM COUNTRIES, AND THAT SHE IS A MUSLIM? Khan is a native of Pakistan, and each and every day that country's non-muslim population is prone to horrendous human rights violations at the hands of people who share her religion, islam.

Anyway, anno 2011 it has been demonstrated crystal clear that the best way to fight poverty is to introduce capitalism, but alas, people won't listen. Rather, they'd buy books like Khan's:






And here is the site she ordered set up to support her phony theories. Below's a screenshot:






A world where a cunt like Khan who bagged, apart from a yearly salary of 132,000 £, a severance payment of:


£533,103


...for sloppy, sleazy and ineffective work, while pretending to care for the wretched poor and downtrodden of this earth, and get away with it, well...

... that's a SICK world.



MFBB.


PS: the first muslim to head AI? Well, once again a follower of the prophet has done a stellar PR job for the Religion of Peace.

SATURDAY NIGHT SMASHING PUMPKINS, PETER GABRIEL.

Smashing Pumpkins with 1979.






Peter Gabriel with Humdrum.





Got to know this number through a friend who lent me a Live album, from 1983 I think that was. Normally, I don't like live performances that much, but on that album, basically all Gabriels songs were mesmerizing, including Humdrum.


Good night.



MFBB.

CHANGE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN!!!

Via Dick Morris:







Proud of it, aren't we?


Sources:

(1) U.S. Energy Information Administration
(2) Wall Street Journal
(3) Bureau of Labor Statistics
(4) Census Bureau
(5) USDA
(6) U.S. Dept. of Labor
(7) FHFA
(8) Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller
(9) RealtyTrac
(10) Heritage Foundation and WSJ
(11) The Conference Board
(12) FDIC
(13) Federal Reserve
(14) U.S. Treasury

Like our pal CDR Salamander always says, Ponder.



MFBB.

OUTRAGE: AFGHAN CHRISTIAN CONVERT SAID MUSA ABOUT TO BE EXECUTED BY AFGHAN GOVERNMENT.

Regular reader Traveller forwarded me a link to the following appalling story. Via National Review Online, February 18, 2011:

AMERICA QUIET ON THE EXECUTION OF AFGHAN CHRISTIAN SAID MUSA.

February 18, 2011 6:00 A.M. By Paul Marshall

"A terrible drama is unfolding in Afghanistan: There are reports that Said Musa, whose situation I described at Christmas, will soon be executed for the ‘crime’ of choosing to become a Christian. (For background, see here.)

Musa was one of about 25 Christians arrested on May 31, 2010, after a May 27 Noorin TV program showed video of a worship service held by indigenous Afghan Christians; he was arrested as he attempted to seek asylum at the German embassy. He converted to Christianity eight years ago, is the father of six young children, had a leg amputated after he stepped on a landmine while serving in the Afghan Army, and now has a prosthetic leg. His oldest child is eight and one is disabled (she cannot speak). He worked for the Red Cross/Red Crescent as an adviser to other amputees.

He was forced to appear before a judge without any legal counsel and without knowledge of the charges against him. “Nobody [wanted to be my] defender before the court. When I said ‘I am a Christian man,’ he [a potential lawyer] immediately spat on me and abused me and mocked me. . . . I am alone between 400 [people with] terrible values in the jail, like a sheep.” He has been beaten, mocked, and subjected to sleep deprivation and sexual abuse while in prison. No Afghan lawyer will defend him and authorities denied him access to a foreign lawyer.

Any and every human being who is imprisoned, abused, or tortured for the free and peaceful expression of their faith deserves our support, but Musa is also a remarkable person and Christian. In a letter smuggled to the West, he says, “The authority and prisoners in jail did many bad behaviour with me about my faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. For example, they did sexual things with me, beat me by wood, by hands, by legs, put some things on my head.”

He added a thing much more important to him, that they “mocked me ‘he’s Jesus Christ,’ spat on me, nobody let me for sleep night and day. . . . Please, please, for the sake of Lord Jesus Christ help me.” (View the full letter here)

He has not, in fact, even appealed to be released, only to be transferred to another prison. He has also stated that he is willing to give his life for his faith. “Please, please you should transfer me from this jail to a jail that supervises the believers. . . . I also agree . . . to sacrifice my life in public [where] I will tell [about my] faith in Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, [so] other believers will take courage and be strong in their faith.”

Newspapers in the U.K. and elsewhere in Europe have reported the story, but with, the exception of the Wall Street Journal and, of course, NRO, American outlets have not found it worthy of attention. The Journal reports that “Afghan officials have been unapologetic: ‘The sentence for a convert is death and there is no exception,’ said Jamal Khan, chief of staff at the Ministry of Justice. ‘They must be sentenced to death to serve as a lesson for others.’”

The U.S. government — reportedly including Secretary of State Clinton — and other governments have pushed for his release, but to no avail.

But the president has been silent, even as we fight a war that has among its goals the creation of a government that conforms to international human-rights standards.

An American president certainly needs to guard and shepherd his political capital, and should not speak out about every prisoner. But Musa himself has appealed to “President Brother Obama” to rescue him from his current jail. And when an obscure and aberrant Florida pastor, Terry Jones, threatened to burn a Koran, not only President Obama but much of his cabinet, as well as General Petraeus, weighed in on the matter.

If the actions of a Florida pastor who threatened to destroy a book holy to Muslims deserved public and presidential attention, then the actions of the Afghan government, ostensibly a ‘democratic’ ally, to destroy something holy to Christians, a human being made in the image of God, also deserve public and presidential attention."

We are - officially, at least - ten years into the War on Islamic Terror now, and I would like to make it clear that I still support the West's missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. I have repeatedly stated that in my opinion, the best and most humane way to solve the islamic problem was to try to implement democracy, by force if necessary, in the hellhole that is the islamic world. Apart from nuking Mecca, Islamabad and Qom, and massive deportation of all muslims in civilized countries to the states they come from, I see no other strategic option for the West and, indeed, the sane part of humanity, to address the conundrum posed by the ummah's very existence. Islam is a cancer and its very existence a smear on Humanity itself.

But since we are civilized, we had, and have, the moral obligation to try out the current approach first. Only if it fails, will we have the moral justitication to resort to other, less nice measures.

Despite the fact that some form of democratic government has been installed in Iraq, I maintain as yet a certain scepticism, as I am trying to find out to what extent the Iraqi government is taking measures to combat the massive persecution of Iraq's christians. I am even more sceptic towards the savages in charge in Kabul, which I have always considered as some kind of Taliban Lite. But then I have always seen more use in Afghanistan's war theatre as a magnet to draw jihadists the world over to a killing ground.

Since Iraq and Afghanistan are the showcases for the West's strategic enterprise, I think that the best approach for our politicians at this time is to exert MAXIMUM PRESSURE on Kabul's, and, to a lesser extent, Iraq's 7th century boneheads to do more to protect their non-muslim citizens. It should be made abundantly clear to them that we offered these assholes the means to build a more fair and more prosperous society on a silver plate (smeared with the blood of our soldiers). It should also be made abundantly clear to them that so far, we are NOT impressed, to say the least, with their school results.

And finally, it should be made abundantly clear to them that if they fail to put a human face on the abomination that is islam, we, and the rest of humanity, will resort to other means to hammer sense in them, and winning hearts and minds will no longer be among those means.



MFBB.

SATURDAY NIGHT CREAM, PHIL COLLINS.

Cream with White Room. 1968.






Easy Lover, by Phil Collins and Philip Bailey. 1984.





Goedenacht.



MFBB.

JOHN SINGER SARGENT (1856-1925).

Not much time. What follows are three works by an American painter I admire very much, John Singer Sargent. I say "American" painter, since to the best of my knowledge he had an American passport, being the son of an American couple, but I'm inclined to think he thought of himself more as a European. After the death of a sister born earlier, his mother was so distraught that she somehow convinced his father to give up his job as an eye surgeon at the famous Wills Eye Hospital in Philadelphia, PA, and adopt an almost nomadic lifestyle throughout Europe. It is there that John was born, in Florence in 1856, and it was also there that he died, in London in 1925. You should discover Sargent. He crafted around 900 oil paintings and some 2,000 watercolors - there's an ocean of beauty to be discovered there.


First Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose. 1885.





Then The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit (1882).





At some point, Sargent became very enamored with all things Spanish. This painting, the psychological aspects of which deserve closer scrutiny, owed much to a Velazquez painting - at least with regards to composition. The beautiful Japanese vases still exist and have even been donated by heirs of the Boit family to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, MA. There they flank this painting, which in 1919 was donated to the museum by the four siblings depicted.

None of these girls would ever marry and they would live lonely lives, with only the two youngest ones, those in the foreground, keeping contact with each other. The two oldest would as adults suffer from debilitating mental illnesses. The names of the girls are Mary Louisa, Julia Overing, Jane Hubbard, and Florence.

It is... as if Sargent has painted here a foreshadowing of these lovely girls' fates. Notice how the older girls seem to be withdrawing already in darkness.

Sad. If it's any consolation for the girls' souls - Sargent has made them immortal.


I suppose this is my favourite. Lady Agnew of Lochnaw. Painted in 1892 and 1893.





Classy Lady. Somehow Sargent has captured here sensuality without the slightest hint of eroticism.



Enjoy, nite. Oh yeah...


... Dead White Male.



MFBB.

TIM BLAIR BLASTS THE GREEN WIZARDS OF OZ.

We don't let our light shine too often on Oz, but today I came across a marvellous Tim Blair observation in his Daily Telegraph blog:

The insane cost of green appeasement:


- Successive federal governments have spent more than $5.5 billion over the past decade on climate change programs that are delivering only small reductions in greenhouse gas emissions at unusually high costs for taxpayers and the economy.


It’s all been for exactly nothing. The precise cost of the 17 programs analysed is $5.62 billion, which equals the pre-tax average annual wages of nearly 90,000 Australians – every cent of it blown to hell.

• Greenoids and environmentalons who complain about public funding of the Australian Formula One Grand Prix should consider that, at just $50 million per year, the amount spent on green dreams would be enough to secure the event until 2123 – when, on current trends, the race will feature gravity-powered nerf karts.

• Australia’s great green waste is more than double the current insurance bill from the massive Queensland floods.

• It’s enough to pay Tim Flannery’s tax evangelism salary until he is more than 31,000 years old, by which time one or two of his predictions may have come true.

• Hand those billions over to Sydney city council and they’d be able to build 14,800 kilometres of cycle lanes for nobody to use.

• Speaking of wasted money, $5.62 billion would fund the entire ABC for nearly seven years. Or seven and a half years once Phillip Adams retires.

• With that kind of cash, the government could put boaties in hotels for 198 years.

Hilariously, green types are using universal past failures to justify the introduction of a carbon tax:


Andrew Macintosh, the associate director of the Australian National University’s centre for climate law and policy, said: ‘’Market-based measures like a carbon price will be far more effective than this sort of scatter-gun approach.’’


Then again, wouldn’t anything be more effective? So far we’re $5.62 billion for zero. Let’s try putting howler monkeys in an industrial centrifuge, or naming our children after shapes. Maybe interfaith staring contests will fix things. Hey, if you’re really crazy, we could always put a tax on fumes that plants eat.

UPDATE. Terry McCrann:


The “Julia” carbon tax will have to raise at least $10 billion a year and continually increasing. Every year. Forever.


Progress!

Tim Flannery is the quintessential complete nutcase ecobozo, formerly a mammalogist and palaeontologist. He should have stuck with his kangaroo species and his fossil bones, alas, this would be May 68 fossil is now more interested in kangaroo courts.





In 2005, he warned against imminent extreme drought in Australia:

"Three major phenomena are depriving Australia of its rainfall..."

"The worst case scenario for Sydney is that the climate that's existed for the last seven years continues for another two years... In that case, Sydney will be facing extreme difficulties with water."

"Large cities are the most vulnerable of all structures to water deficit because you've got 4 million people who need water there just for everyday survival."

"If you think there's only a 10 per cent chance that this rainfall deficit's going to continue for another few years, you'd be pulling out all stops to preserve water. Because every litre you use now on your car, or your garden or whatever else, you might want to drink in a year's time."

Quick reality check. Sydney, Colo River, a good one month ago:





More ***EXTREME DRAUGHT*** in Australia:





Econutters. Just how long are we going to keep up with their nonsense?



MFBB.

GRATUITOUS VALENTINE'S DAY PIC.

Hey, any excuse to post a Gemma Atkinson pic is good.




MFBB.

GOOD NEWS FROM SWITZERLAND - AGAIN! CONGRATULATIONS TO "THE MOST ARMED AND THE MOST FREE"!!!

Between gnarling teeth and a lot of hissing the BBC published this update on the Swiss referendum held today, dealing with tighter gun control in the Alpine nation, population about 7.8 million, who together own between 2 and 3 million firearms kept freely at home. The fact that nobody knows just how many firearms there are at home is a clear indication of the very "liberal" view on keeping and owing guns. Swiss soldiers, upon leaving the army, are even allowed to keep their SG550 assault rifles!

We have already seen that the Swiss have both more backbone and more common sense than your average EU-citizens. In November 2009, a referendum brought up by the Swiss People's Party, despite its name rightwing, led to a ban on the construction of minarets. Today, Sunday 13 February 2011, the Swiss roundly rejected a bill that would have imposed severe restrictions on gun ownership:

SWITZERLAND REJECTS TIGHTER GUN CONTROLS

"Swiss voters have rejected proposed tighter controls on gun ownership, final results show. Twenty of the 26 cantons and 56.3% of voters rejected the plan, meaning the current system allowing army-issue weapons to be kept at home will remain.

Supporters of the tighter curbs wanted to have weapons kept in armouries and were demanding stricter checks on gun owners. Opponents said the move would have undermined trust in the army.

For the proposal to succeed, it required the support of the majority of both citizens and cantons. Geneva and Basel both bucked the trend by approving it, according to the Swissinfo website. But German- and Italian-speaking cantons outvoted the plan's supporters in the French-speaking west.

'Growing awareness'

The result is a blow to gun-control groups in Switzerland, the BBC's Imogen Foulkes in Geneva reports, but supporters of the initiative said they had at least started a debate.

"We achieved a great deal by launching the initiative... There is a growing awareness of the risks of firearms," leading women's organisation Alliance F said in a statement quoted by Swissinfo."

Belgium's "top" newspaper De Standaard wouldn't be the leftist rag that it is if, in the runup to the referendum, it wouldn't have forwarded completely ludicrous arguments as to exactly WHY the Swiss would be better off if they turned their weapons in:





The key sentence here is:


"In Zwitserland plegen jaarlijks zo'n 1.300 mensen zelfmoord; in een kwart van de gevallen wordt een vuurwapen gebruikt, dat is voor Europese begrippen erg veel."


Translated:

"In Switzerland, some 1,300 people commit suicide yearly; in a quarter of the cases a firearm is used, a staggering figure for Europe".

Fucking BOGUS De Standaard. A quick reality check:

Switzerland has 7.8 million people. As we have seen every year there's 1,300 suicides.

Now for Belgium. Belgium has 10.8 million people. Belgium also has one of the severest gun control laws in the entire world. Citizens are basically absolutely powerless to stop criminals, and every once in a while, if a jeweller DOES shoot a perpetrator, it's the former who lands in prison. Well, the number of suicides in Belgium in 2009 was:


5,712


Only one EU country, Finland, does bet, erm, worse. Even if you adjust for the population disparity (7.8 million vs 10.8 million), Switzerland would have around 1,500 suicides compared to Belgium's 5,700 or...


... only ABOUT A QUARTER.


Which is a thought exercise De Standaard won't bother to make, let alone suggest you do it. Instead it adds the completely superfluous "in a quarter of the cases, a firearm is used, a staggering figure for Europe".

Which proves absolutely NOTHING, except for the fact that in a country where so many firearms are at home, and some of those hapless souls who do decide to commit suicide - relatively speaking only 25% of those in the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics of Belgistan - simply grab for the most obvious and most easy way out of this life.

As if these people wouldn't commit suicide IF ONLY there were no firearms at home. The reality is that WERE IT SO, the person involved would simply jump off a bridge or in front of a train. But thinking that through must have required too much brainpower from De Standaard's editors.

Well, maybe they do possess the brainpower, and like always it's just that plain old leftist reflex again, Power not to the People, as they so often claim, but to their self-invented God, the State. Liberals and socialists alike, they don't like people who can think for themselves, can fend for themselves, and can DEFEND themselves.

I'd like to end with two memorable quotes. The first one is from Thomas Jefferson:

"An armed man is a citizen. An unarmed man is a subject."

The second one is from Niccolo Machiavelli:

"The Swiss are the most free and the most armed people of Europe."

Damn right. Congratulations for the Swiss.

Or rather, for the true descendants of Wilhelm Tell.



MFBB.

SATURDAY NIGHT DANZIG, THE CULT.

Danzig with Blood and Tears. This heavy metal band around singer/songwriter Glenn Danzig, saw the light in 1987 in Lodi, New Jersey. The number, imnsho the best Danzig song, is on Danzig's second album Lucifuge (1990).





There's a tremendously good Blood and Tears video out there which is kind of an homage to Elvis. Unfortunately you can't embed it. Check it out here.



The Cult. Revolution.





Album: Love (1985). Frontman's Ian Astbury.


Slaap wel.



MFBB.

SHAME ON YOU, BARBARA BUSH.

Maybe it's the dark winter months. Maybe it's the continuous strain. Maybe it's the gloomy news all around the globe. Maybe it's the fact that I drove thru Molenbeek, Brussels, last week and witnessed with my own eyes what it means if a city turns islamic.

Don't get me wrong - basically, I feel fine and quite healthy. And actually, biz is booming.

Still, recently I thought I could use some more things to cheer you up a little. Especially if the profit percentage of you company, despite backbreaking work and your best efforts, is still measured in a single-digit number.

Well, if I get to read that the daughter of former President George W. Bush speaks out in favor of gay marriage, it's definitely NOT one of those things that cheer you up a little. Déjà vu, if like me you live in Europe. This is what you get if not only the educational system, but also 95% of the media, 99.5% of the idiots from the entertainment industry AND even many supposedly rightist icons have made leftist talking points, cleverly camouflaged as "evident" 21st century common sense, their own too.

As I wrote before somewhere on these pages, the left scored two enormous victories post WWII. It's not that they haven't scored more. They did. But imho, regarding two issues they were astonishingly successful. The first issue is that they managed to label Nazis "rightwing", while in fact it's an heinous extreme leftwing ideology.

The second victory is that they have been able to have the common public accept their pet ideas as accepted wisdom. This is why anno 2010 the UK has a so-called "conservative" PM who's disposed favorably towards gay pride parades, and who is hellbent on neutering Britain's armed forces and reduce them to a size rather fit for Luxembourg or something. It is why Sweden has a so-called "conservative" PM who is prepared to stifle the right to freedom of expression not for the extremist muslims undermining his country, but for that tiny percentage of sane Swedes gathered under the Sverigedemokraterna banner...

... and it's why the daughter of George W. Bush, a girl who thereby publicly distances herself from the politics of her father, is disposed favorably towards gay marriage. SHAME ON YOU, BARBARA BUSH!!!

Via AOL News:

"Former President George W. Bush's daughter Barbara is the latest relative of a prominent Republican to support gay marriage.

In May, her mother, Laura Bush, gave this answer to a question about gay marriage: "When couples are committed to each other and love each other, that they ought to have, I think, the same sort of rights that everyone has."

John McCain's daughter, Meghan, supports gay marriage, though her father's against it, and the lesbian daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney supports it too. Gay rights leaders have seized on the generational split as a sign that support for same-sex marriage can come from either party.

Breaking ranks with her father, Barbara Bush taped a short video supporting the push to legalize gay marriage in New York.

"I am Barbara Bush, and I am a New Yorker for marriage equality," the 29-year-old Manhattan resident says in the video on the Human Rights Campaign website. "New York is about fairness and equality. And everyone should have the right to marry the person that they love. Join us."

As president, her father supported a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage

A Yale graduate, Barbara Bush has started a global health nonprofit group and rarely speaks on public issues. Friends tell The New York Times she was surrounded by gay students at Yale and in the New York City design world in which she worked..."

Barbara Bush, stop fooling around, grow a brain, quit with that ABSOLUTELY LUDICROUS "global health nonprofit group", get to work in the PRIVATE sector, get married (to a man) and put some lovely babies on this world forchrissake.



I... do not want to brag.

But... the REAL brave these days are not the Barbara Bush types. It's EASY to endorse a viewpoint that is already so massively endorsed and hyped up that inevitably the perception arises that those who DO NOT endorse it seem archaic at best, and backward bigots at worst.

No Barbara Bush, no need to put laurels on your head for your stance and the flashy ad you made. I am more brave than you because I dare to speak out AGAINST the travesty that is being made of an institution reserved for a MAN and a WOMAN.

And if you out there, like me, dare to say that out loud and decry this travesty, and the even worse travesty the Leftist Scum and their gullible followers made from PARENTHOOD... because that is the logical consequence if you allow gay marriage...





... then you are a Hero too.

Nite. Poor, poor, poor, poor, poor kid. What a fucked up world.



MFBB.

P.S.: Elton, do something about your looks. You look like SHIT.

LIEGE, BELGIUM. WALLOON SOCIALISTS ACTIVELY PURSUING HALAL HUB AT LIEGE INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT.

I am too f*cked up to translate it myself from either Dutch or French, so I borrowed this from Islam In Europe:

LIEGE: PLANS FOR EUROPEAN HALAL HUB AT AIRPORT.

"The management of Liège Airport (Belgium) is planning to develop a European hub at the airport, dedicated to processing halal foods. The project is supported by the Walloon Region and the Walloon agency for exports and foreign investments (AWEX), La Libre Belgique reported Saturday.

The move is meant to diversify the activities of the Liège Airport partnership. A mission led by Jean-Claude Marcourt, the Walloon minister of Economy and Foreign Affairs, at the end of February or beginning of March to Asia, will clarify the project."

Nothing new under the sun. Marcourt is a prominent member of the Parti Socialiste. Perhaps no other European party is so hellbent on introducing islam in Europe as the Walloon Socialist Party.



MFBB.

SATURDAY NIGHT THE HEADSTONES, TASMIN ARCHER, THERAPY?

The Headstones with When something stands for nothing.





Canadians from Kingston, Ontario. Formed in the late eighties, broke up in 03. Front man's Hugh Dillon. This single came from the album Picture of Health (1993).



Tasmin Archer with Sleeping Satellite.





From her not so aptly named 1992 debut album Great Expectations. We've all come to know them great expectations huh?

Sorry if I ruined the song with that last link. I'll make it good:

Therapy? with Stories.





Northern Irish band, formed in 89 or so. Singer's Andy Cairns. This hit is from the 1995 album Infernal Love.



Good night, and may the farce be with you.



MFBB.

WHY RICHARD STENGEL IS AN ASSHOLE (AND WHAT'S JONAH GOLDBERG'S WAY OF SAYING THAT IN A NICER WAY).

I'm a bit late to offer my 2 cts. on this travesty, but okay...

... most of us have seen this cover, right?





Words fail me to describe how OFFENDED I feel by this sooooooooooooooo CHEAP attempt at trying to reap, no, make that steal, some good karma of Ronaldvs Maximvs to make TIME's erstwhile Golden Boy look a little less like simpering almost-roadkill. God, what a bunch of despicable SLIMEBALLS over at Time Magazine, and then especially their "managing editor" Richard Stengel. Good thing I suspended my subscription in 09 already, by then not being able anymore to endure the nauseating leftist bias - I might have choked in my morning coffee had my wife given me the week's issue at breakfast.

Apparently, I wasn't the only one. Over at Stormbringer, Sean Linnane has a good go at Time's disgusting recuperation operation:

"OBAMA LOVES REAGAN"

The managing editor at TIME Magazine, Richard Stengel, attempts to explain their latest cover; an image of Reagan with his arm around Obama:

"The cover is Why Obama Loves Reagan. It's a Photoshopped image of the two men together. They never actually met, but I'd like to think they'd have a good time if they were sitting down at the White House together and it's basically how Obama from even the 1980s started looking at Reagan as a transformational politician - not in terms of substance, but in terms of style with someone he would model himself after, and that has happened over the last 20 years.


GIVE ME A FREAKING BREAK! DEPARTMENT

Obama HATED Reagan - he even wrote about it in his book Dreams From My Father:

"When classmates in college asked me just what it was that a community organizer did, I couldn't answer them directly. Instead, I'd pronounce on the need for change. Change in the White House, where Reagan and his minions were carrying on their dirty deeds . . ."

Further on, Obama criticizes Reagan for "verbal legerdemain"; accusing Reagan of duplicity in the gap between his optimistic words and the actions of his administration.


This attempt by the Left to repackage Obama as the new Reagan strains the imagination; one of Obama's stated reasons for wanting power was to do away with what Reagan had accomplished. Obama has nothing in common with Ronald Reagan. If Reagan were alive today watching all this, he'd puke at what's being done to his legacy and to the great work he did as President.

Everybody knows that liberals all hate Reagan, they all despise Reagan, to a man. A singular, constant objective of the Left always has been to revise Reagan history; during Reagan's time in office they berated his economic policy - trickle-down; "a rising tide lifts all boats" - their catch phrase for it was 'Voodoo Economics'. Never mind that his policies actually worked, and led to a twenty-eight year economic boom, unparalleled in the history of the entire world.

Reagan fought the Communists when the rest of the world had resigned itself to turning their collective back to the Red Threat, drop trousers, bend over and grab the ankles. He alerted on the arm shipments into the Western Hemisphere from Communist sources, and in Grenada and Nicaragua he did something about it. What did the Democrats do to admire and support this Cold Warrior? They attempted to destroy him for domestic political gain - Iran-Contra - and a lot of good, decent mens' careers were ruined in the process..."

RICHARD STENGEL

PATHETIC SLIMEBALL

... But imnsho the Prize for Most Efficient Rebuke goes to Jonah Goldberg, who has this marvellous piece over at Townhall:

"The only good conservative is a dead conservative.

That, in a nutshell, describes the age-old tradition of liberals suddenly discovering that once-reviled conservatives were OK after all. It's just we-the-living who are hateful ogres, troglodytes and moperers.

Over the last decade or so, as the giants of the founding generation of modern American conservatism have died, each has been rehabilitated into a gentleman-statesman of a bygone era of conservative decency and open-mindedness.

Barry Goldwater was the first. A few years ago his liberal granddaughter produced a documentary in which nearly all of the testimonials were from prominent liberals like Hillary Clinton and James Carville. Almost overnight, the man whom LBJ cast as a hate-filled demagogue who would condemn the world to nuclear war became an avuncular and sage grandfather type. Down the memory hole went one of the most despicable campaigns of political demonization in American history. Even Sarah Palin hasn't been subjected to an ad in the New York Times signed by more than 1,000 psychiatrists claiming she's too crazy to be president (though I don't want to give anybody any ideas).

Then there was William F. Buckley, the founder of National Review, the magazine I call home. For more than four decades, Buckley was subjected to condemnation for his alleged extremism. Jack Paar (the Johnny Carson/Jay Leno of his day for you youngsters) was among the first of many to try to paint Buckley as a Nazi. Now, Sam Tanenhaus, editor of the New York Times book review section, who is writing a biography of Buckley, insists that Bill's life mission was to make liberalism better.

But it's Ronald Reagan who really stands out. As we celebrate the 100th anniversary of his birth, the Gipper is enjoying yet another status upgrade among liberals. Barack Obama took a Reagan biography with him on his vacation. A slew of liberals and mainstream journalists (but I repeat myself) complimented Obama's State of the Union address as "Reaganesque." Time magazine recently featured the cover story "Why Obama (Hearts) Reagan." Meanwhile, the usual suspects are rewriting the same columns about how Reagan was a pragmatist who couldn't run for president today because he was too nice, too reasonable, too (shudder) liberal for today's Republican Party.

....


On the other hand, what is not welcome is an almost Soviet airbrushing of the past to serve liberalism's current agenda. For starters, if liberals are going to celebrate Reagan, they might try to account for the fact that they fought his every move, alternating between derision and slander in the process. As Steven Hayward, author of the two-volume history "The Age of Reagan," asks in the current National Review, "Who can forget the relentless scorn heaped on Reagan for the 'evil empire' speech and the Strategic Defense Initiative?" Hayward notes that historian Henry Steele Commager said the "evil empire" speech "was the worst presidential speech in American history, and I've read them all."


....


While the encomiums to Reagan & Co. are welcome, the reality is that very little has changed. As we saw in the wake of the Tucson shootings, so much of the effort to build up conservatives of the past is little more than a feint to tear down the conservatives of the present. It's an old game. For instance, in 1980, quirky New Republic writer Henry Fairlie wrote an essay for the Washington Post in which he lamented the rise of Reagan, "the most radical activist of them all." The title of his essay: "If Reagan Only Were Another Coolidge ..."

Even then, the only good conservative was a dead conservative."

Damn right. Stengel, drop almost dead of shame you MORON.



MFBB.

THE PRODUCT OF A LIBERAL UPBRINGING.

Martin Sheen definitely did a darn good job of raising his boy...





... NOT!!!


Via FoxNews.



MFBB.

SATURDAY NIGHT THE LEVELLERS, JOHN MURPHY, GUSTAV MAHLER.

I'm sorry for the light blogging last week, but the work was excruciating. I think I should hire extra personnel, but 1° the insane labor costs imposed by the Belgian government and 2° the difficulty of finding qualified personnel, are holding me back. Otherwise, there were a lot of good topics around last week. Hopefully, next week will allow some more time for bloggin'.

The Levellers with One Way, from their second album Levelling the Land (1991). This single is once again proof that you don't have to be mentally sane to make decent music (the Brighton-based Levellers are some kind of anticapitalist econutters).





John Murphy, British film music composer, is as old as I am but a bit more famous.





This number, In the house, in a heartbeat, is from the soundtrack of the 2002 zombie movie 28 Days Later, which was directed by Danny Boyle and casts a.o. the Irish actor Cillian Murphy (not related to the composer, at least not that I know of). The movie was quite good; Cillian and John Murphy and Danny Boyle would work together on another project yet, the 2007 sci-fi Sunshine, which I also recommend, although the idea of re-igniting the Sun with humanity's biggest H-bomb ever is totally ludicrous imho, given that even a dying Sun, like in the movie, remains a massive fusion reactor itself, that dwarfs anything and anything and anything humanity would ever be capable of.


A couple of weeks back, I posted a Youtube video with Mahlers 5th Symphony's Adagietto. I was not entirely pleased with that version. I found a much better one. Here it is:





Breathtaking. Can you believe these are students???


Nite.



MFBB.

PROP IN THE JET AGE: THE DOUGLAS A-1 SKYRAIDER.

Designed by Ed Heinemann of Douglas Aircraft Company during WWII, as a successor to types as the Helldiver and the Avenger, the Skyraider, nicknamed Able Dog, would prove so successful that it was still used extensively, and with success, in the Vietnam War.





These aircraft were HUGE. Flying trucks, actually. Had to be, with all that armor, which allowed them to take terrible punishment from the ground and still fly. But, they weren't sitting ducks for enemy planes either. In 'Nam, Skyraiders were even credited with downing a Mig-17:






MFBB.

SATURDAY NIGHT BEN FOLDS FIVE, BRAD.

Ben Folds Five with Battle of Who Could Care Less, from the album Whatever and ever Amen (1997).





They formed in 93 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Singer/songwriter Ben Folds also plays the piano. In spite of their name, there were only three band members.



Brad with The day brings.





Guys hail from Seattle, where they formed in 1992. Five years later, this hit was drawn from the album Interiors. Frontman is Shawn Smith (vocals, keyboards).


Bonsoir.



MFBB.

MARK STEYN: "DEPENDENCE DAY".

It's been some time since we last heard of Mark Steyn, but for the moment he's back. Over at The New Criterion, a thought-provoking essay about our changing times and how a handover of global dominance by, well, you know who said that the dollar was a thing of the past this week...

... how a handover of global dominance might be different from the last time the baton was passed, when Britain lost its Empire and the USA assumed the role of the world's policeman.

"... The baton of global leadership had been passed. And, if it didn’t seem that way at the time, that’s because it was as near a seamless transition as could be devised—although it was hardly “devised” at all, at least not by London. Yet we live with the benefits of that transition to this day. To take a minor but not inconsequential example, one of the critical links in the post-9/11 Afghan campaign was the British Indian Ocean Territory. As its name would suggest, it’s a British dependency, but it has a U.S. military base—just one of many pinpricks on the map where the Royal Navy’s Pax Britannica evolved into Washington’s Pax Americana with nary a thought: From U.S. naval bases in Bermuda to the Anzus alliance down under to Norad in Cheyenne Mountain, London’s military ties with its empire were assumed, effortlessly, by the United States, and life and global order went on.

One of my favorite lines from the Declaration of Independence never made it into the final text. They were Thomas Jefferson’s parting words to his fellow British subjects across the ocean: “We might have been a free and great people together.” But in the end, when it mattered, they were a free and great people together. Britain was eclipsed by its transatlantic offspring, by a nation with the same language, the same legal inheritance, and the same commitment to liberty.

It’s not likely to go that way next time round. And “next time round” is already under way. We are coming to the end of a two-century Anglosphere dominance, and of a world whose order and prosperity many people think of as part of a broad, general trend but which, in fact, derive from a very particular cultural inheritance and may well not survive it. To point out how English the world is is, of course, a frightfully un-English thing to do. No true Englishman would ever do such a ghastly and vulgar thing. You need some sinister rootless colonial oik like me to do it. But there’s a difference between genial self-effacement and contempt for one’s own inheritance.

Not so long ago, Geert Wilders, the Dutch parliamentarian and soi-disant Islamophobe, flew into London and promptly got shipped back to the Netherlands as a threat to public order. After the British Government had reconsidered its stupidity, he was permitted to return and give his speech at the House of Lords—and, as foreigners often do, he quoted Winston Churchill, under the touchingly naive assumption that this would endear him to the natives. Whereas, of course, to almost all members of Britain’s governing elite, quoting Churchill approvingly only confirms that you’re an extremist lunatic. I had the honor a couple of years back of visiting President Bush in the White House and seeing the bust of Churchill on display in the Oval Office. When Barack Obama moved in, he ordered Churchill’s bust be removed and returned to the British. Its present whereabouts are unclear. But, given what Sir Winston had to say about Islam in his book on the Sudanese campaign, the bust was almost certainly arrested at Heathrow and deported as a threat to public order.

Somewhere along the way a quintessentially British sense of self-deprecation curdled into a psychologically unhealthy self-loathing. A typical foot-of-the-page news item from The Daily Telegraph:

A leading college at Cambridge University has renamed its controversial colonial-themed Empire Ball after accusations that it was “distasteful.” The £136-a-head Emmanuel College ball was advertised as a celebration of “the Victorian commonwealth and all of its decadences.
Students were urged to “party like it’s 1899” and organisers promised a trip through the Indian Raj, Australia, the West Indies, and 19th century Hong Kong.

But anti-fascist groups said the theme was “distasteful and insensitive” because of the British Empire’s historical association with slavery, repression and exploitation.

The Empire Ball Committee, led by presidents Richard Hilton and Jenny Unwin, has announced the word “empire” will be removed from all promotional material.

The way things are going in Britain, it would make more sense to remove the word “balls.”

It’s interesting to learn that “anti-fascism” now means attacking the British Empire, which stood alone against fascism in that critical year between the fall of France and Germany’s invasion of Russia. And it’s even sadder to have to point out the most obvious fatuity in those “anti-fascist groups” litany of evil—“the British Empire’s association with slavery.” The British Empire’s principal association with slavery is that it abolished it. Before William Wilberforce, the British Parliament, and the brave men of the Royal Navy took up the issue, slavery was an institution regarded by all cultures around the planet as as permanent a feature of life as the earth and sky. Britain expunged it from most of the globe.

It is pathetic but unsurprising how ignorant all these brave “anti-fascists” are. But there is a lesson here not just for Britain but for the rest of us, too: When a society loses its memory, it descends inevitably into dementia. As I always try to tell my American neighbors, national decline is at least partly psychological—and therefore what matters is accepting the psychology of decline. Thus, Hayek’s greatest insight in The Road to Serfdom, which he wrote with an immigrant’s eye on the Britain of 1944:

There is one aspect of the change in moral values brought about by the advance of collectivism which at the present time provides special food for thought. It is that the virtues which are held less and less in esteem and which consequently become rarer are precisely those on which the British people justly prided themselves and in which they were generally agreed to excel.
The virtues possessed by Anglo-Saxons in a higher degree than most other people, excepting only a few of the smaller nations, like the Swiss and the Dutch, were independence and self-reliance, individual initiative and local responsibility, the successful reliance on voluntary activity, noninterference with one’s neighbor and tolerance of the different and queer, respect for custom and tradition, and a healthy suspicion of power and authority.

Within little more than half a century, almost every item on the list had been abandoned, from “independence and self-reliance” (some 40 percent of Britons receive state handouts) to “a healthy suspicion of power and authority”—the reflex response now to almost any passing inconvenience is to demand the government “do something.” American exceptionalism would have to be awfully exceptional to suffer a similar expansion of government without a similar descent, in enough of the citizenry, into chronic dependency...."

I got the embed code at Breitbart. The caption underneath there drily reads: "President Obama is doing a great job of increasing America's stature and respect in the world."


You bet.



MFBB.

IT IS TIME TO BOMB IRAN.

Canada's National Post, Wednesday 19, 2011:

"... The Harper government sent a diplomatic note to Iran Wednesday, as Heritage Minister James Moore lashed out at Tehran for its part in a campaign that cancelled the screening of a movie critical of the Iranian regime at Library and Archives Canada.

On Wednesday morning, the Minister instructed Library and Archives Canada to show Iranium, a documentary critiquing Iran’s nuclear program, after it cowed to numerous threats of protest and an official request from the Iranian embassy in Canada to not present the film Tuesday night, as scheduled.

In its diplomatic note to Tehran, the government said Canada is a free country and that freedom of expression is a core value that won’t be compromised.

“This movie will be shown, the agreement will be kept and this movie Iranium will be shown at Library and Archives Canada. We will not be moving it to a different facility, we’re not bending to any pressure,” said Mr. Moore on the CBC’s Power and Politics.

“People need to be kept safe, but we don’t back down to people who try to censor people by threats of violence.”

Mr. Moore also called on Canadian authorities to investigate threats made against the Library. He said the potential need for an increased security presence “will be taken into account” when the screening is rescheduled in February.

In a statement to the media, the Library said it had no choice but to close the Wellington Street building around 4 p.m. Tuesday.

“The decision to reschedule will allow [the Library] to take the necessary security measures for the upcoming viewing over the next few weeks,” the statement read.

Fred Litwin, president of the Free Thinking Film Society, said he was relieved to hear the Library will play host.

“Still, the bigger question to me is what really happened this week? What were those threats, what was said?”

The cancelling indeed prompted a sharp and bold rebuke from Canada's Heritage Minister, James Moore. Check out this video:





The reaction was swift and, actually, not entirely expected. From a country like Canada, where it was possible to stage high profile kangaroo trials against Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant - a dhimmi attitude would not have surprised me in the least. Perhaps Moore's reaction is one more indication that people have it had islamic blackmailing. From there to having it had with islam tout court is another matter, but one can always hope.

Be that as it may...


... how long is the West going to pander yet to Iran? For those who are short of memory, read this telling 2008 article by Debbie Schlussel. The hostagetaking in Tehran in 79, the Beirut embassy and Marine Barracks bombing in 83, the Buenos Aires bombings in 92 and on and on and on, over the truckloads of IED materials shipped into Iraq after 2003 to Afghanistan....

... it's always Iran, Iran, Iran.


In 1885, then Governor General of the Sudan Major General Charles Gordon Brown, died a hero's death defending Khartoum against the hordes of Mahdi Muhammad Ahmad. His body was decapitated and the head desecrated. Then, as now, the West was far too slow to realize the intrinsically evil character of an islamic uprising. Still, thirteen years later, at the Battle of Omdurman, the Mahdist Army was all but wiped out by a much smaller British force equipped with Maxim machineguns and artillery. After the battle, Kitchener ordered the remains of Mahdi Muhammad Ahmad (he had actually died but a few months after Gordon) exhumed, burned and its ashes dispersed. Yes, Kitchener knew how to deal with islamic terrorism.

Not so a good century later. 31 years after the beginning of Khomeiny's Revolution, and after countless often very blooded provocations, Iran continues to up the ante... to the point where they think they can dictate what can and cannot be shown to the Canadian public.

We need a new Kitchener. But where is he?



MFBB.

MELANIE PHILLIPS ON ISRAELI TV.

Do not miss this extraordinary interview with Melanie Phillips on Israeli TV:





As I heard Mrs. Phillips elaborate so eloquently about the near total lack of an rightwing antiweight to the leftist media juggernaut that is European MSM, I was reminded of an article with a very similar message on the Brussels Journal, by a young Norwegian author, apparently a student no less (!). Come to think of it, the mere fact that I feel compelled to use an exclamation mark in connection with a person who's in his early twenties and who's rightwing, is telling. The author's name is Svein Sellanraa, and his short essay is titled Generation Y Radicals.

Here's an exerpt:

"... I have written before about the cultural hegemony the Left exercises in Norway, and about how it has turned universities and schools into indoctrination camps. The generation of Norwegians born in the late 1980s and early 1990s is the first to have lived its entire life in the shadow of this hegemony. Most every teacher, government official, journalist, celebrity, or family member they have encountered spouts the same leftist talking points; most everything they have read, watched, and listened to to has been carefully bowdlerized to make apparent the wickedness of Western culture, the division of history into oppressor and oppressed, and the goodness of egalitarianism. The members of Norway's Generation Y are not the first to embrace the views of the postmodern, politically correct Left – that dubious honor belongs to their parents and grandparents –, but they are the first to absorb it by osmosis. Given the state of Norwegian schools and culture, most of them have probably never even heard of Lukács, Adorno, or Marcuse. They are not only committed to the Cultural Marxist Weltanschauung, but unaware that there is any alternative to it. The upshot of this is that they are not usually bad or stupid people, just grievously misinformed. None of the anecdotes I give here are intended to mock or humiliate the people they depict, many of whom I consider friends. The fault lies not with them, but with the sociopathoid armchair Berias responsible for their indoctrination.

Norway's Gen-Y radicals are utopians. By this I do not mean that they want a perfect society. They are rarely utopians in that sense, just as they are never radicals in the sense of wanting to overthrow the existing order. Like most of the post-Marxist Left, they have abandoned the pipe-dreams of the first socialists; if they believe in the “end of history” at all, they think of it in terms of managerial welfare-state democracy, not a property-less Eden. No, they are utopians in the sense that they believe social problems to be the result of faulty institutions and social structures, and thus also solvable through the modification of those structures. For them, human society and human nature can and should be engineered. This strips the individual of moral responsibility, promotes a sterile, teleological view of society and an interventionist, utilitarian view of the state, and begets the opinions that hierarchy is always unfair and arbitrary, that crime is never the criminal's fault, and that every social institution hides a Darwinian struggle for “resources” between faceless, impersonal forces.

The radicals also have a hefty sense of entitlement. They do not request things -- they demand them. They are perpetually shocked, indignant, and concerned about something. Their shock, indignation, and concern is most frequently directed at Racism, Poverty (which they are demanding – demanding! – be Made History), War, and all the other Important Causes. These evils, they reckon, are best controlled by expanding the State, dismantling what remains of the European heritage, and empowering left-wing internationalist institutions like the EU and the UN. Like China's Maoists the Gen-Y radicals pursue a perpetual, institutionalized revolution in which all humanity is subsumed into isms, ologies, and bureaucratic duckspeak. Like Italian Fascists they are vitalists who value mass political action for its own sake. (I remember an acquaintance who in December 2009 considered going to Copenhagen and protesting the climate summit; she didn't make it clear why she thought the summit should be protested, and I don't think she quite knew -- the important thing was that going to marches and protests is the sort of thing socially conscious and morally upstanding people do.) And like the Brezhnev era's "conservatives in the Kremlin" they see themselves not as reconstructive radicals, but as defenders of an ongoing revolution..."

It is all true. The key to solving our predicament is re-conquering the narrative. Or, perhaps I should say simply "conquering". Was there ever a time truly rightist ideas were spread out and lauded unhindered throughout Europe? I don't think so.

I have to stop now, for lack of time. It's very late, and tomorrow, like on all other days, there's a tremendous amount of work to do. But I have to say one thing yet, and it is destined for the young readers out there. By young I mean, yes, 18 to 25 years old.

If you are in that age group, and words and meanings like individualism, pride in your country's past, duty, honor, christianity, family values, capitalism and free markets, the desire for knowledge, a strong defense, the will to contribute to society rather than claim entitlements from it... mean much more to you than the endlessly repeated mantras of the leftist church...

... then you should consider yourself part of an elite. Much will depend upon you. Don't get disheartened. Connect with likeminded people. They are out there, I'm sure of it.




MFBB.

CLIMATE DISRUPTION REMOVING FAIL.

EMBED-Clearing Snow Off The Roof Fail - Watch more free videos


Hat tip Theo Spark.



MFBB.