Best quotes of 2007

There are three certainties in life, death and taxes, and the Democrats' desire to get money from both.

--Steve Forbes, on Your World with Neil Cavuto, Jan. 6


[I am] the most powerful woman in America.

And...

We will not just break through a glass ceiling, we will break through a marble ceiling. In more than 200 years of history, there was an established pecking order -- and I cut in line.

--Nancy Pelosi on becoming Speaker of the House, Jan. 4

The burden is on the president to justify any additional resources. ... The president's going to have to engage with Congress in the justification for any additional troops.

--Nancy Pelosi, Face the Nation, Jan. 7

We put all our concerns on hold to let the leaders lead. I think we're owed a big, massive apology.

--Robert Redford, Sundance Film Festival, Jan. 18

The president knows that because the troops are in harm's way, that we won't cut off the resources. That's why he's moving so quickly to put them in harm's way.

--Nancy Pelosi, ABC's Good Morning America, Jan. 19

This was his decision to go to war with an ill-conceived plan and an incompetently executed strategy.

--Hillary Clinton, to an audience in Iowa, Jan. 28

So, we pay the soldiers a decent wage, take care of their families, provide them with housing and medical care and vast social support systems and ship obscene amenities into the war zone for them, we support them in every possible way, and their attitude is that we should in addition roll over and play dead, defer to the military and the generals and let them fight their war, and give up our rights and responsibilities to speak up because they are above society?

--William Arkin, The Washington Post, Jan. 30

I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that's a storybook, man.

--Senator Joseph Biden, D-Del, New York Observer, Feb. 7

If I were running Al Qaeda in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008 and pray as many times as possible for a victory not only for Obama but also for the Democrats.

--John Howard, Australian Prime Minister, Feb. 10

Indisputable evidence — long hidden but now available to everyone — demonstrates conclusively that so-called 'secular evolution science' is the Big Bang, 15-billion-year, alternate 'creation scenario' of the Pharisee Religion. This scenario is derived concept-for-concept from Rabbinic writings in the mystic 'holy book' Kabbala dating back at least two millennia.

--Ben Bridges, state rep, R-Georgia, Feb. 15

I do not support Roe versus Wade. It should be overturned.

--John McCain, Senator, R-Arizona, Feb. 18

(MMOs/MMORPGs are) going to destroy TV - and it's going to happen in short term," said Daniel James of Three Rings.

--Daniel James of Three Rings, March 7

Amid the real challenges in Iraq, we're beginning to see some signs of progress. Yet, to score political points, the Democratic majority in the House has shown it is willing to undermine the gains our troops are making on the ground.

--President Bush, March 23

You, Misters Bush and Cheney, you, Ms. Rice, are villainously and criminally obscene people. And I've got a question for your daughers, Mr. Bush. They're not children anymore. Do they support your policy in Iraq, if they do, how dare they not be in uniform.

--Sean Penn, March 24

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) offered an excellent demonstration yesterday of why members of Congress should not attempt to supplant the secretary of state when traveling abroad.

--Washington Post editorial, April 5

We need a post-Bush, post-9/11, post-Iraq military that is mission focused on protecting Americans from 21st century threats, not misused for discredited ideological purposes. By framing this as a war, we have walked right into the trap the terrorists have set -- that we are engaged in some kind of clash of civilizations and a war on Islam.

--John Edwards, presidential candidate, former U.S. Senator (D), May 23


(In Greenland) we saw firsthand evidence that climate change is a reality; there is just no denying it. It wasn't caused by the people of Greenland — it was caused by the behavior of the rest of the world.

--Nancy Pelosi, May 28

What this global war on terror -- bumper sticker, political slogan, that's all it is, that's all it's ever been -- was intended to do was for George Bush to use it to justify everything he does.

--John Edwards, Democratic presidential candidate, June 3

I came here looking for a great country. I found a great country.

--Sean Penn, of Venezuela, Aug. 6

We've got to get the job done (in Afghanistan). And that requires us to have enough troops so that we're not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous problems there.

--Barack Hussein Obama, Aug. 14

Jared Diamond and the rise and fall of civilizations

A New York Socialist Times article deals with Jared Diamond's interesting theories on the rise and fall of civilizations as detailed in his books "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed "and "Guns, Germs and Steel". I haven't read either book; I've only seen The History Channel's treatment of the latter book. From the NYST:

While “Guns, Germs, and Steel” explored the factors contributing to a society’s rise, “Collapse” tried to account for the downfalls. Here, human agency played a more prominent role. In case after case, Dr. Diamond described how a confluence of factors — fragile ecosystems, climatic change, hostile neighbors and, ultimately, bad decision making — cornered a society into inadvertently damaging or even destroying itself.

In his haunting chapter about Easter Island, he weighed the data — radiocarbon dating, charcoal and pollen analysis and botanical and archaeological surveys — and concluded that the inhabitants had mined the forests to extinction, setting off a cataclysm. What, Dr. Diamond wondered in an often cited passage, was going through the mind of the Easter Islander who cut the last tree?

The story isn't about Jared's theories per se. It talks about opposition to the theories:

But what was intended as a cautionary tale was taken by some readers as blaming the victims. Terry Hunt, an archaeologist at the University of Hawaii, came to the Amerind conference with a different story. Deforestation, he said, was caused not by people, but by predatory Polynesian rats, with the human population remaining stable until the introduction of European diseases.

Dr. Diamond, he said, “shifts all of the burden to people and their stupidity rather than to a complex ecosystem where these things interact.”

Taken together, the two books struck Frederick K. Errington, an anthropologist at Trinity College in Hartford, as a “one-two punch.” The haves prosper because of happenstance beyond their control, while the have-nots are responsible for their own demise.

Maybe the nature of this opposition is the reason it garnered the attention of a socialist newspaper. According to this article, the opposition doesn't like how the "rich" became successful by luck, while the "poor" made the beds they're lying in. Socialists would be against anything that says the poor have any responsibility whatever for their own situation, and equally disdainful of any theory that suggests the rich didn't rise to their positions by exploiting the toiling masses. (Yes, everything is political.)

At any rate, I highly recommend the story and Diamond's theories. If nothing else, all are very interesting.

The story of Pakistan and Benazir Bhutto

Boys and girls, how about a story for Thursday?

Once upon a time there was a brutal military general who seized control of a backward little country, becoming The Dictator. Why he wanted to control a cesspool remains a mystery. In an effort to appease Strong External Forces, he labeled himself President, but only he used that term without laughing.

For years The Dictator ruled with an iron fist. His rule was defined by two imperatives: 1) develop weapons of mass destruction, and 2) fight a Dark Age Cult determined to keep the country in a nightmare of oppression worse even than The Dictator's rule. The Dictator was successful with Item No. 1, introducing nuclear weapons to a very unstable part of The World. Item No. 2 is less clear.

Unbeknownst to The People, The Dictator and the Dark Age Cult were working together in a power sharing deal. The Dictator would make occasional forays into Cult territory to appease the Strong External Forces, while the Cult had a free hand to oppress and murder people in territories they controlled.

One day a Champion of Freedom came along and tried to liberate The People from The Dictator and the Dark Age Cult. The Champion's efforts were rewarded with a heinous assassination. After the murder, The Dictator and the Dark Age Cult each hoped The World would point fingers at the other.

The Strong External Forces issued weak condemnations of the assassination, and then continued doing what they're best at -- nothing. Hopefuls for the throne of the Strong External Forces wasted no time seizing the opportunity to gain much needed publicity for themselves.

Regular working folks anxiously waited for the Socialist Press to blame the assassination of the Champion of Freedom on Bush or Climate Change, or both.

Merry Christmas

Waterboarding

If pouring water on the head of a murdering scumbag prevents further mass murder, I'd be happy to do it myself. I'm with Nancy Pelosi -- I don't mind waterboarding and am concerned it may not be strong enough. Atlantic Monthly writer Mark Bowden on waterboarding:

When captured in Pakistan in 2002, Zubaydah was one of the world's most notorious terrorists. The 31-year-old Saudi had compiled in his young life 37 different aliases and was under a sentence of death in Jordan for a failed plot to blow up two hotels jammed with American and Israeli tourists. The evidence was not hearsay: Zubaydah was overheard on the phone planning the attacks, which were then thwarted. He was a key planner of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, was thought to be field commander of the attack that killed 17 U.S. sailors on the USS Cole, and was involved in planning a score of other terror attacks, successful and unsuccessful. He was considered to be a primary recruiter and manager of al-Qaeda training camps.

He was, in short, a highly successful, fully engaged, career mass murderer. Think back to those pictures of workers crouched in windows high up in the burning World Trade Center towers, choosing whether to jump to their death or be burned alive. This was in part Abu Zubaydah's handiwork.

Liberals actually believe cockroaches like this shouldn't be waterboarded. He should be released!

Two aspects of moral relativism

Why do liberals apply their morals to our own past, but refuse to apply them around the world today?

Liberals are champions of moral relativism, which says that moral standards are culturally based and we mustn't judge another person or country based on their morals (or moral decay). America and the West must be idealistic in all things. In other words, the socialist press jumps on anyone or anything in the West that isn't perfect. All the while, Arabs, Africans, and others with barbaric cultures (female genital mutilation, wife beating, hanging homosexuals, and stoning pregnant women to death) are fine. I look at this as sideways moral relativism (in other words, the "X" part of the graph). I call this X-MR. "X" is the present day.



At the same time, liberals have no problems applying modern morals to past history, even ancient history. For instance, I've heard countless liberals lambast the USA for its treatment of American Indians, even though morals of the day, generally speaking, considered poor treatment of the Indians acceptable. The prevalent thought about Indians, in the minds of English colonialists in America, is written straight into the Declaration of Independence ("savages" who don't distinguish between combatants and innocent civilians, including children, in warfare). Liberals like to use the American Indian experience to make themselves feel guilty. I view this as the "Y" part of the moral relativism graph, where "Y" is time. Liberals are unwilling to apply their current morals to cultures across the world right now, but looking into the past, it's a useful tool to make America look like a nation of obscene barbarians. I call this Y-MR.

Other examples of Y-MR:

Nuclear bombs dropped on Japan during WWII

Internment of Japanese Americans during WWII

Slavery in 18th and 19th centuries

McCarthyism

Interestingly enough, as a practical libertarian who leans right and supports the Iraq War, I'm a total moral relativist. I'm a "Y" moral relativist, but not an "X" moral relativist. This is the opposite of leftists. I don't give Muslims a pass for beating their wives, for instance, where leftists do. I don't search for alternate translations when Iran's "president" says Israel must be wiped off the map, where leftists do. I don't want to elevate school children to the next grade before they're academically qualified, where leftists do. I blame the Muslim pilots for killing 3,000 innocent civilians on 9/11, where leftists don't. I stand firmly against the persecution of homosexuals anywhere in the world, where leftists don't.

Fighting back

Here's why combatting these liberals is a challenge: killing hundreds of thousands of civilians with two bombs in WWII was bad. It can't be denied. Same with the others on the list. To unravel the peculiar liberal thinking, one must consider the context and prevailing thought at the time of the events. For instance, for most of WWII, the prevailing thought (on both sides, by the by) was that the war must be stopped as soon as possible, and this view was stronger at times than the desire to fight a chivalrous war. More civilians were killed in the bombing of more than a dozen German cities, all designed to kill civilians, and London, and many other cities, than at Nagasaki and Hiroshima combined. Leftists ignore all of this because it weakens their cause.

When a liberal says America is bad because of the atomic weapons used in WWII, he is either a) ignorant of history, b) knowingly misconstruing history to support his dislike of America, or c) has lost his grip on reality. I give liberals a lot of credit, placing most of them in the "b" category. Consider that minimum estimates, by all sides and biases, begin at 1 million dead for an invasion of the main Japanese islands. Also consider that the atomic bombs were dropped specifically to avoid this deadly scenario. Truman's choice was one of the most difficult of WWII, but the choice was easy, and for that he's a hero.

Also, the US didn't enter the war in any seriousness until Dec. 7, 1941, after the Pearl Harbor attack. The most enlightened among the liberals say that we deserved that attack because of the oil blockade on the Japanese. These liberals avoid using the correct term for "Japanese", which was Japanese Empire. And they ignore the fact that Japan entered the war in 1937 by invading china. Are liberals not familiar with the Rape of Nankin? Do they really not know what the Japanese did to civilians and POWs? Perhaps I'm wrong about this, but I think they do, and therefore they know that the oil blockade against the "Japanese" was designed to stifle the murderous, bloodlust of the Japanese Empire. The blockade was an attempt to stop the empire without bloodshed.

The readiness with which liberals practice Y-MR and refuse to practice X-MR is so strange that I'd feel comfortable saying that even they know this isn't rational. If that's true, then there's a more sinister motive, such as a bitter hatred of strength (USA) and a worship of weakness (contemporary barbaric cultures). This is a central tenet of socialism: strength is bad, weakness is good. This accurately portrays liberal thinking in America, and leftists everywhere. Whether you apply that to Washington liberals, British teacher's unions, or French opposition to the Iraq War, it all fits.

As far as WWII goes, I'll throw in one more tidbit: worldwide leftists learned the wrong lesson from WWII. Based on the lethality and destructiveness of WWII, all wars must be avoided no matter what. If Churchill could come back to life for 24 hours, I think he'd tell us that the correct lesson to learn from WWII is to stop tyrants intent on death and destruction early, not late. Sometimes that means war. See Iraq...

The socialist ticket

I had a nightmare last night. Edwards announced he was going to be Hillarious Clinton's running mate. Hello socialized medicine and forced doctor visits.

Lakota nation secedes from union

The Lakota Indians have seceded from the United States of America, declaring they're withdrawing from treaties with the US and issuing their own passports and drivers licenses. News.com.au:

"This is according to the laws of the United States, specifically article six of the constitution,'' which states that treaties are the supreme law of the land, he said.

"It is also within the laws on treaties passed at the Vienna Convention and put into effect by the US and the rest of the international community in 1980. We are legally within our rights to be free and independent,'' said (activist Russell) Means.

The Lakota relaunched their journey to freedom in 1974, when they drafted a declaration of continuing independence — an overt play on the title of the United States' Declaration of Independence from England.

[...]

"We have 33 treaties with the United States that they have not lived by. They continue to take our land, our water, our children,'' Phyllis Young, who helped organize the first international conference on indigenous rights in Geneva in 1977, told the news conference.

This is perfect! Robert Redford doesn't have to go all the way to Ireland to get away from the country he loathes. He can just go to North Dakota and live in a tipi.

Ward Churchill has been a consistent liar about his fake Indian heritage -- I'm sure the new Lakota country would take him despite the enormous whoppers.

I expect left-wingers to emigrate en masse. Their Great Climate Change Swindle is designed to revert us to a life of hunting and gathering -- like Indians -- without benefit of industrialization. They should really like life up there. I hope they send a post card, or at least smoke signals to let us know they're okay.

Ted Kennedy

My personalized bed sheets have been stolen

Bicyclers are Nazis

Nazi bicycle propaganda

Nuremburg rally, 1937

Bike-Nazis don't go for Sunday afternoon rides in the country. The solitary dude who makes a trip to 7/11 for smokes is not a Bike-Nazi. No, the Bike-Nazis are the bastards who feel entitled to roads built for cars. They usually ride in the middle of a car lane, challenging motorists to run them down. Their self-righteous attitude is absurd.

L.J. Williamson of the LA Times has found a way to complain about "climate change" and a perceived slight to bicyclers at the same time. He has killed two Socialist birds with one stone!

Touring the Festival of Lights in Griffith Park is an exercise in irony. Entering the mile-long display, staged every year by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the first thing visitors see is a sign announcing that the festival is "going green." If you're driving the south-to-north route, that is. Maybe if you're walking southbound it would be the last thing you see. But who won't see the sign at all? Bicyclists.

Oh, the horror!

The DWP gave cyclists the run of the light show for one measly night, Nov. 19, technically two days before the "festival" began. And of course it wasn't during the prime Thanksgiving-to-Christmas window when most people have their holiday groove on. During the rest of the festival, bicycles are banned, even though the light displays line Crystal Springs Drive, a public street with a striped bike lane.

Look, Ace, bikes are banned because they're a pain in the ass for the rest of us (the majority). Take your little bikes, your spandex shorts, and plastic shoes, and go to a bike trail. If you want more trails, pay for them yourself.

Displaying some dim awareness of the folly of barring cyclists from a public roadway, the DWP, in a meager attempt at appeasement, added the solitary night for bikers. (The festival was given over to pedestrians, by contrast, Nov. 21-25.) One stingy night of right, however, doesn't cancel out a month of wrong.

I guarantee Williams was wearing spandex pants and plastic shoes when he wrote that.

Not a Bike-Nazi. He doesn't need to be run down.

New York Socialist Times cries over 'climate change'

True to its Socialist ideals, the New York Socialist Times is crying about the lack of Socialist (excuse me, "progressive") action in Bali. And for that matter, why the hell was a conference on "climate change" held in a terrorist nation like Indonesia? The Bali bombers were just released ahead of schedule, and then treated to a party at the home of the country's counterterrorism chief. It's madness, I tell ya.

Here's the New York Socialist Times in all its glory:

In Bali, where delegates from 187 countries met to begin framing a new global warming treaty, America’s negotiators were in full foot-dragging mode, acting as spoilers rather than providing the leadership the world needs.

In Washington, caving to pressures from the White House, the utilities and the oil companies, the Senate settled for a merely decent energy bill instead of a very good one that would have set the country on a clear path to a cleaner energy future.

The only way the Times editorial board could conclude that the United States should provide "the leadership the world needs" on "climate change", they must believe there is a scientific consensus on climate change and its causes. There is not, and that is well known at this point, even in socialist circles. That doesn't stop the NYST from pushing its political agenda, as opposed to practicing a dying art -- journalism.

From the United States the delegates got nothing, except a promise to participate in the forthcoming negotiations. Even prying that out of the Bush administration required enormous effort.

Good; as it should be. The carbon-criers should get nothing from us -- this whole Global Warming Swindle has nothing to do with saving the planet (Al Gore asked, Are we betraying the planet? as if it were alive). It is a 100-year-old battle between Socialism and Capitalism. Each international plan for reducing carbon emissions has as its foundation the steering of money from the United States to third world countries. This is ludicrous.

The New York Socialist Times is not really upset that the US didn't throw away its economy on the meaningless claims of junk science; it's much simpler than that. They and fellow Socialists lost their bid to strike a blow against Capitalism.

Money for terror

Over $7 billion has been pledged to the Palestinians -- folks who indiscriminately kill children, as well as adult civilians. That fact didn't stop Mahmoud Abbas from turning the tables on Israel. Al-AP:

“It's the moment of truth,” Abbas told some 90 donor countries and international organizations gathered Monday in Paris. “I'll be eager to implement all our commitments,” Abbas said, and “I expect them to stop all settlement activities, without exceptions.”

Condi Rice brought her smiles and my money to the donor conference. Because my money is going into the hands of people who murder children, I won't vote Republican again for many years.

Michael Savage fights where Imus fled

I'm glad Savage isn't backing down to CAIR's calls for boycotts of his advertisers. I see the New York Socialist Times picked up the story:

The humbling of Don Imus last spring over his remarks about the Rutgers women’s basketball team has done nothing to quiet Michael Savage, a radio host with a far bigger following and far more checkered track record.

Mr. Savage, whose program reaches an estimated eight million listeners a week on nearly 400 stations, suggested over the summer that a group of college students on a hunger strike in support of easing immigration restrictions should “fast until they starve to death.” In October the Board of Supervisors of San Francisco, the city from which Mr. Savage often broadcasts, took the unusual step of passing a resolution condemning him for the remarks.

Then, a few weeks ago, Mr. Savage uncorked a cascade of invective about Islam. Among his on-air comments: the Koran is “a book of hate”; some Muslims, at least, “need deportation”; and adherents of Islam would do well to “take your religion and shove it up your behind” because “I’m sick of you.”

In response the Council on American-Islamic Relations, whose stated mission includes correcting mischaracterizations of Islam, tore a page from the playbook of Mr. Imus’s critics. It made Mr. Savage’s comments widely available on the Internet and called on advertisers to boycott his program, which is behind only Rush Limbaugh’s and Sean Hannity’s in number of listeners, according to Talkers magazine, an industry publication.

Savage's response to the boycott:

On Dec. 3 Mr. Savage fired back at his critics in a way Mr. Imus never did: He filed a lawsuit in United States District Court against the council, not only for taking his comments out of context — he says they were made within a broader discussion of the president of Iran — but for then making audio of them available on its Web site, cair.com.

Here's an interesting look at Savage:

Mr. Savage agreed last week to allow a reporter to sit in on his program, but only on the condition that the reporter not reveal the location of the waterside house where he was broadcasting that day, or of two other homes where he has studios and which he treats as virtual safe houses. Mr. Savage, who is licensed to carry a pistol and does so, said the secrecy was warranted by his fears for his life, based on the sheaf of death threats he says he has received over the years.

Mr. Savage can be surprisingly unintimidating in person, standing 5-foot-7 and looking, on this day, like he had sprung from an L. L. Bean catalog in a bright orange corduroy shirt, black fleece vest and tan chinos, with a miniature poodle at his feet. He can also project charm, insisting that a visitor just off a cross-country flight pause to have a turkey sandwich with potato salad.

[...]

He readily acknowledged, though, that during his 20s and 30s he was “super left-wing,” including the times he worked as a welfare worker on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and later as a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned a Ph.D. in nutritional ethnomedicine.

But he turned sharply to the right after, among other things, finding that his welfare clients were often living better than he, and that despite a Ph.D. he couldn’t get a college teaching job after five years of trying. “I was the wrong race,” he said. “I was the wrong sex.”

HP software: what a joke

I'm very happy with my HP laptop, except for the peculiar "health check" feature, which is for idiots.

No. 1, I disabled it, but it keeps coming back to life. Just when I'm doing something intensive, like editing video, it kicks in. Motherfuckers.

No. 2, it claims my system is in "poor" health because I haven't yet downloaded a new version of HP's quicklaunch buttons. These are stupid and I disabled them and will never download a new version because my IQ is above 65. Motherfuckers.

No. 3, when it begins running (against my will), the app doesn't show up under "apps" or "processes" in the Task Manager. Motherfuckers.

Is HP trying to convince me to switch brands?

Shoot It: Houston

A homeowner shot and killed a burglar. No charges are expected. God bless Texas.

"I have no regrets at all on his part," Barone said. "I feel sorry for his family."

In the weeks leading up to the shooting, several neighborhood cars were broken into and the shooter's dog was poisoned. I'd betcha anything all of these problems cease now that the worthless bastard has been offed.

Related news from USA Today include Castle Doctrine in Mississippi:

The "Castle Doctrine " law removes the requirement that citizens first must seek a safe retreat from an intruder before using deadly force. Similar laws have passed in 19 other states in two years, in large part because of lobbying by the National Rifle Association (NRA).

A recent spate of shootings in Jackson, the capital, has reinvigorated public discussion of the law. In one week in late September and early October, four Jackson homeowners fired shots at four suspected burglars. Two of the suspected intruders were killed and a third was injured.

And this opinion piece written by an NRA veep:

The policy that USA TODAY derided in a 1994 editorial as "one of the most cockamamie clichés in the pro-gun lexicon" halted unspeakable carnage in a Colorado Springs megachurch on Sunday.

Colorado's right-to-carry law — which USA TODAY fiercely opposed as "an old West remedy" — empowered volunteer security guard Jeanne Assam to stop a mass murderer inside her crowded church.

Shoot It™ series here.

The benefits of understanding English

Sent in by Captain Ahab.