Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

“Overpowering Horror”

46 Comments

Some thoughts on what it takes to slit the throat of a baby:

…to live under the rule of Jews! This is a matter of great shame, an “overpowering horror” that justifies baby-killing in the minds of many (I’d wager most) Palestinians to expiate that shame. I suspect that part of the loathing other Arabs feel for the Palestinians stems from their view that the Jews made the Palestinians their bitches, to be vulgar about it, and no Muslim worthy of the name would permit such an inversion of the natural order to happen. The very notion that a Jew should command and a Muslim obey, that a Jew should ride while a Muslim walks, that a Jew should be armed while a Muslim is weaponless is simply an abomination — an “overpowering horror.”

Not that most would be able to do such a thing — human beings are hard-wired to recoil from slitting throats of three-month-old babies. But while in other circumstances the inability to kill babies would be seen as a good thing, in this case those Palestinians who can’t bring themselves to do that see it as a weakness — they wish they could muster the courage to murder Jewish babies, but unfortunately they can’t. So the second best is to lionize those heroes who do have the cojones to wipe away the shame of being subject to Jewish overlordship.

We underestimate the cultural war in which we are engaged at our extreme peril. I’m not sure I agree that it’s “most,” but it’s enough that it’s as big a problem as the Nazis were, in terms of having to break the back of a racist totalitarian ideology. And we’re not doing much along those lines. Instead, we pretend it doesn’t exist, or that it’s just a few “extremists,” and that we should give equal time to the KKK and murderers of abortion providers.

Popular Culture

Top O’ The Mornin’

4 Comments

[Note: this post will be at the top for a while, so keep scrolling for new crap]

Start your day off with a few jigs from the best trad Irish band ever (in my opinion). Dual fiddles lend them a unique sound.

The leader, Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh (Mary Mahoney for Anglos, daughter of the famous fiddler Frank Mahoney from County Donegal) also has a beautiful, ethereal voice, particularly when she sings in Irish.

And yes, she sings in English, too. The Lass of Glenshee:

Finally, just to pick things up, a few reels.

[Update a while later]

Jim Bennett links in comments to an emigration song. Here’s another by Andy Irvine (one of the founders of Planxty):

It’s interesting to hear an Irish musician play an octave mandolin. He also plays bouzouki. He bummed around in southeastern Europe quite a bit in the seventies, and brought a lot of Romanian folk songs back with him, including houras, which have a very complicated rhythm.

You might note at the end that the tune starts to segue into another, which is the second in the trilogy from the album on emigration, but it doesn’t seem to be on Youtube. Nor is the third, Edward Connors. As you’ll note from the lyrics, the reality of the New World didn’t always live up to the hype. Thousands of them crossed the Atlantic to flee The Great Hunger to find but a grave.

Continue reading Top O’ The Mornin’ →

Political Commentary

Union Thugs

26 Comments

…destroy recall petitions:

This video was shot minutes after a union advocate destroyed several petitions at a recall Jim Holperin Rally in Merill, WI. The event was moved to the court house grounds because the private location originally slated to host the event was threatened with arson. It should be noted that police were present when the protester destroyed these recall petitions, but stated to us that there was nothing they could do about it.

But don’t call them fascists. We have to get rid of public-employee unions, particularly when they’re supposed to be enforcing the law.

[Update a few minutes later]

More union thuggery, and double standards:

In the spirit of the “new tone” some union protesters took it upon themselves to invade the Commerce, Labor and Agriculture Senate Committee room in the Tennessee state capitol. As one of the demonstrators said, “I see civil disobedience as an obligation that we have when we see injustices in the world.” That is an interesting point of view. The left can’t stand it when the right simply gathers on the grounds of a building in protest, but they find it to be their duty to invade an actual committee hearing and disrupt the proceedings at will for their issues.

Remember when the Tea Partiers invaded the US Capitol, and disrupted proceedings?

Me, neither.

[Update a few minutes later]

Mob rule is not democracy, now or in ancient Rome.

[Update on Thursday afternoon]

Now it’s getting personal — an ugly message to Ann Althouse and Meade:

WE WILL F**K YOU UP. We will throw our baseballs in your lawn, you cranky old pieces of s**t, and then we will come get them back. What are you gonna do? Shoot us? Get Wausau Tea Patriots to form an ad hoc militia on your front lawn? That would be fucking HILAROUS to us. You could get to know the a***oles on your side in real f**king life instead of sponging off the civil society we provide for you every single day you draw breath.”

Words not masked in original. And you know what’s ironic? To the degree that these children think about it at all, they probably think that we’re the fascists.

[Bumped]

[Evening update]

Meade isn’t cowed by the thugs. What I find most dismaying is that these pathetic creatures are teaching our children.

Business, Economics, Education, Political Commentary

A Bit Of Good News

7 Comments

The law-school bubble is popping:

“I’m hearing from the students I work with that they are concerned about the value of a law degree,” said Tim Stiles, a career adviser at the University of North Carolina. Students, he said, often tell him they have read press accounts about the difficulty of finding law jobs.

Some students are starting to feel they don’t need an advanced degree to improve their career opportunities, college advisers said.

Business-school applications for the fall 2011 class have not been tallied yet by the Graduate Management Admission Council. But last year, the average number of applications to full-time graduate programs declined 1.8%, the Council said, the first decline since 2005.

“When the economy first went down, students saw law school as a way to dodge the work force,” said Ryan Heitkamp, a pre-law adviser at Ohio State University. “The news has gotten out that law school is not necessarily a safe backup plan.”

It’s not just good news because it’s generally good news when bubbles finally deflate, at least for productive activity. It’s also good news because the overproduction of lawyers in itself has high external costs on society. I wish that we could swap a million or so for Japanese engineers.

Business, Space

Space Access ’11

2 Comments

Henry Vanderbilt has the list of speakers up. With the number he has, it’s going to be hard to come up with a schedule. It really needs two tracks, given the time available, but that would entirely change the flavor of the conference. I’m not sure what he wants me to talk about, but likely it will be my ongoing efforts to get Republicans and conservatives to act like it when it comes to space policy.

Now that this stuff is finally taking off (both figuratively and literally,with real hardware), the industry may be outgrowing the conference. I’m sure that Henry can’t be unhappy about that, though it may mean big changes in the future.

Media Criticism, Space, War Commentary

Iran Lies About Its Space Program

10 Comments

…and the AP buys it uncritically:

Iran says it has sent the country’s first space capsule that is able to sustain life into orbit as a test for a future mission that may carry a live animal.

The state IRNA news agency says the capsule was carried by a rocket dubbed Kavoshgar-4 – or Explorer-4 in Farsi – some 75 miles (120 kilometers) into orbit.

There is no such thing as a 75-mile orbit. That’s barely into space (the official altitude is a hundred kilometers, or about 63 miles), and there is too much drag to sustain it. If they have enough velocity to get to orbit, they’d also have enough to get to a decent altitude (at least a hundred fifty miles or so). This was probably a suborbit. If there was a launch at all.

I wonder if they bothered to confirm with the JSPOC? Maybe I will.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

“The Path Ahead Is Cloudy”

1 Comment

A. B. Stoddard is not sanguine about the prospects for the president’s reelection:

As the Republican race begins in earnest, and Obama kicks off his own reelection campaign, it is increasingly clear that the path to an Obama victory is anything but clear. Stubborn joblessness, soaring gas prices, the still-rising cost of healthcare insurance, the apathy of Obama supporters, the erosion of support from white working-class and suburban voters and the considerable sums of secret money conservatives promise to pour into the campaign all pose challenges to his plan to win again. Taken together, they might be insurmountable.

What’s encouraging to me (as someone who looks forward with great eagerness to a new resident in the White House in less than two years) is that their political ear remains as tin as ever. It should be getting more and more clear that the Obama people were never the vaunted political genii that the bien pensant proclaimed them to be in 2008. They were just in the right place, at the right time. With a candidate with the right skin color.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!

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