TechnoChitlins

From Confederate Yankee-

If I'm right, Israeli Air Force planes have been hitting Hamas fortifications filled with eager young terrorists who died waiting for an invasion that will never come. Hamas was suckered into putting their fighters in combat positions while the IAF simply waited for them to show up for their pre-planned bombing runs.

If Gazans weren't part of a genocide-mad death cult I might feel sorry for them, but then I remember that these same terrorists purposefully target Israeli civilians, and that even their kids dance in the streets when Israeli woman and children are killed by Hamas rockets, and I don't feel too bad, at all.

I don't feel sorry for them at all- they are like a mad death cult that the other Arabs use to pound Israel. They're a total waste of humanity and deserve much more than they are getting.

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via the whole dang intarweb

Posted by Jay-Dubya at 09:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Consider-

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions". In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.

via American Digest

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Wow, Gerard. Just wow.

In 5 B.C. "travel" was not something undertaken lightly. It involved, across distances that would seem trivial today, risks of life and death at every turn. It required wealth and endurance. Few traveled for pleasure. To travel at all required a motivation far beyond the ordinary. So, at the very least, while we cannot know what was in the sky in those days, we can be certain it was something very unusual.

In his short story, "The Star," Arthur C. Clarke's Jesuit narrator of the far future discovers the remnants of a civilization destroyed by a violent nova so that its light might announce the birth of Christ on Earth. The story has that ironic twist that is popular with authors and pleasing to readers. I remember it as making an impression on me when I was around 12 years old. But the story does not age well because the science of it, like all science, does not age well. The story is just 53 years old.

In 1957, when I was twelve years old, we all lived in a far smaller universe with far fewer stars for God to destroy by way of cosmic birth announcements. Now that the inventory of His stars has increased a billion fold, I think it is safe to say He could have found one to suit His purpose that didn't involve destroying a blameless alien race. He could simply pick one deeper in the field and, well, ramp up the volume. That sort of thing is just an afterthought once You've got omnipotence. It might even do double duty if You could use a star in an area that might need a few more heavy elements across the next brief one or two billion years of Your plan.

Sages and mystics, Eliot and Clarke, and a host of others have all had their turns with the story of The Star. In the end it remains what it was when it began, a story. The story of a road trip by three astrologers, kings, wise men. A journey by men who saw something special in the heavens and determined to follow it wherever it led, no matter what the cost.

I can't imagine what would keep you from it- Read It All.

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In a post at The Doctor is In, the good doctor muses on how our culture has become less compassionate:

The nurse — young, competent, smart, hard-working, the very best of the modern nursing profession — apprises me of his situation, closing with this knockout punch: "You know, we just passed that initiative — you know, the suicide one. He'd be an excellent candidate."

She wasn't joking.

Taken a bit off guard, I responded that it is most unwise to give physicians the power to kill you, for we will become very good at it, and impossible to stop once we are.

She continued: "No, I would love to work for a Dr. Kevorkian. Be an Angel of Death, you know?"

"I know", I muttered under my breath, as she ran off to another bedside, competently and with great efficiency, to adjust some ventilator or fine-tune some dopamine drip. And hopefully do nothing more.

These vignettes in modern medicine are really not about medicine at all. They are in truth about a culture which has lost its compassion. Our calloused and cynical society has become a raging river fed by a thousand foul and fetid streams. We have, by turns, taught our children that ethics are situational and values neutral; taught our women that compassion and service are signs of weakness, that they must become hard and heartless like the men they hate; taught our men that success and the respect of others comes not through character and integrity but through callousness, cynicism, and greed; and taught ourselves that we are a law unto ourselves, the sole and final arbiter of what is right and what is good.

We have, in our post-modern and post-Christian culture, inexorably and irrevocably turned from our roots in Christian morality and worldview, which was the foundation and font of that which we now know — or used to know — as Western Civilization. Yes, we have preserved the tinsel and the trappings, the gilded and glittering exterior of a decaying sarcophagus, where we speak self-righteously of rights while denying their origin in the divine spark within the human spirit, made in the image of God; where we bray about liberty, but are enslaved to its bejeweled impostor, the damsel of decadence and libertinism; where compassion is naught but another government program to address the consequences of our own aberrant and irresponsible behavior, duly justified, rationalized, and denied. Others must pay so that I may play, you know.

It doesn't matter that much how we got here- we could spend post after post on that topic- but the fact is we're becoming a hard, uncaring society just at a time where kindness and compassion are most needed. Where will this lead?

I don't like it but feel powerless in the face of it.

Sorry for no direct link- my rotten corporate firewall won't allow it. Go to here and scroll to the post "Revolution of the soul".

Posted by Jay-Dubya at 11:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Daphne states what should be obvious and what many are thinking but are, face it, afraid to say.

Watching the latest Islamic terrorist horror in India starts a rolling list in my head that can't be stopped; Iran, Beirut, USS Cole, Somalia, 9/11, Spain, London. Those are just the big ones, everyday around the world Islamists murder in the name of their politicized religion. They attack women, children, the old and infirm, coreligionists, non-believers, white, brown or yellow, it doesn't matter. An alarming portion of their fellow Muslims support their grisly agenda, some of them actively, others by dancing in the streets, expressing joy in the deaths of strangers. I hate these bastards.

...

I don't believe Mohamed was holy or a prophet. I think he was evil incarnate carrying the words of Satan himself to a crew of desert simpletons. Islam is a barbaric, unpeaceful, vile, unthinking distortion of worship. The fact that the majority of its adherents can't even read the Koran smacks of mindless ignorance. I see no enlightenment elevating individual singularity or acknowledging gifted greatness in this corner of archaic darkness. My lip curls at their love of theocracies, a willingness to subjugate themselves to the whims of dissolute rulers along side an ancient text they can't even begin to comprehend, subsuming their divine individuality to a tide of dogmatic mandates. I have no use, or respect, for the people who follow this religion. I'm past tired of their bombing, shooting, acid throwing, coup d'etat loving, rioting asses and it looks like the rest of the world could stand a break from these murdering bastards, too. According to a website that does nothing but track worldwide Islamic terrorism, there have been 12,328 Islamic terrorist attacks since 9/11. Don't tell me this isn't an Islamic issue, the rest of us aren't practicing murder on a worldwide scale in the name of religion.

I'm fed up. Please don't start feeding me that lame 'Moderate Islam' load of bull. Sure, I know most Muslims aren't carrying out jihad, many don't financially support those activities, millions don't dance in the streets and rejoice death. Answer me this though, of all of those billions who don't participate, how many are actively fighting the Islamists?

What she said. When are we going to wake up? They HATE our civilization, they HATE our race, and want us all to die painfully. Their torture of the Jews this weekend in Mumbai was unspeakable. I for one refuse to think that they are somehow our moral equal- they are savages pure and simple, and extermination is too kind a fate for them.

via Gerard

Posted by Jay-Dubya at 09:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Jeff G. writes of how The One™ will soon be tested:

Bush has set conditions that could allow Obama, if he abandons the desire to be liked as the underlying principle of his foreign policy and sticks to the path the Bush administration has laid out, to preside over the greatest blossoming of liberal democracy and stability the Middle East has ever seen, and in all likelihood, to get the credit for it.

For all of this, Barack Obama owes George W. Bush a tremendous debt of gratitude.

Much of this will, of course, be met with howls of recrimination from the progressives who installed the new Messiah-in-Chief — but Obama himself must recognize that to all this there is a strong undercurrent of truth that he simply must accept as a condition of readying himself to lead.

We've heard an awful lot about Obama's great intellect; now we'll get to see how he uses it: either in accepting the obvious, based on a disinterested surveying of the facts and regional conditions on the ground brought about by the Bush strategy for combating international Islamist terrorism; or in rationalizing away those gains and attempting to alter the strategy in the hopes of leaving his own seal on the fate of the middle east and surrounding environs.

The former would show the kind of post-partisan spirit to which his campaign has promised to lay claim (even if is born of a pragmatic assessment, one in which Obama recognizes that he will risk his presidency should he change course and the US is again attacked). The latter would should the hubris that the self-styled "thinkers" Obama hopes to surround himself with are apt to engage in, if history is any guide.

The past is prologue. The future is now.

Welcome to reality. Choices have consequences and we'll all have to live with yours, Mr. President-Elect.

Posted by Jay-Dubya at 09:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

...and I do like me some snark

Tragic irony alert. They hated Hill because she hearted the invasion of Iraq, and only turned against it in a naked bid to become president. They even bared their venerable breasts at her in their rage. They loved Obama because he was pure. He always hated the Iraq war, even before anyone cared what he thought. It was going to be a shining city on a hill, where AmeriKKKa would be Goddamned and humiliated in the world. Surrenderpalooza. But the standard bearer of change … has changed. How long now before the Change-Hoper is confronted with the breasts of wrath? Tragic irony alert. They hated Hill because she hearted the invasion of Iraq, and only turned against it in a naked bid to become president. They even bared their venerable breasts at her in their rage. They loved Obama because he was pure. He always hated the Iraq war, even before anyone cared what he thought. It was going to be a shining city on a hill, where AmeriKKKa would be Goddamned and humiliated in the world. Surrenderpalooza. But the standard bearer of change … has changed. How long now before the Change-Hoper is confronted with the breasts of wrath?

Funny stuff. Get ready for at least four more years of it. Hopiness and Changeitude We Can Believe In©

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About this blog...

The analysis indicates that the author of http://www.technochitlins.com is of the type:

INTP - The Thinkers [INTP]

The logical and analytical type. They are especialy attuned to difficult creative and intellectual challenges and always look for something more complex to dig into. They are great at finding subtle connections between things and imagine far-reaching implications.

They enjoy working with complex things using a lot of concepts and imaginative models of reality. Since they are not very good at seeing and understanding the needs of other people, they might come across as arrogant, impatient and insensitive to people that need some time to understand what they are talking about.

Insightful I think- I know I can come across as quite the asshole at times without meaning to. LOL sometimes I mean to though...

via Typealyzer

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Go you Devil Dogs!

As Jules says- Ultimate Heroes

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Zombie said it, so I guess I'll go along-

I declare November 22, 2008 to be "Victory in Iraq Day." (Hereafter known as "VI Day.")

By every measure, The United States and coalition forces have conclusively defeated all enemies in Iraq, pacified the country, deposed the previous regime, successfully helped to establish a new functioning democratic government, and suppressed any lingering insurgencies. The war has come to an end. And we won.

What more indication do you need? An announcement from the outgoing Bush administration? It's not gonna happen. An announcement from the incoming Obama administration? That's really not gonna happen. A declaration of victory by the media? Please. Don't make me laugh. A concession of surrender by what few remaining insurgents remain in hiding? Forget about it.

The moment has come to acknowledge the obvious. To overtly declare a fact that has already been true for quite some time now. Let me repeat:

WE WON THE WAR IN IRAQ

Of course now that The One is close to being anointed sworn in as President he should get all the credit. After all, he was right all along, never mind that "unwinnable" stuff.

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Gerard has an essay up that touches me in a very dark way by musing on the dark inner being some of us have. Mine I call "The Beast" and he manifests when I'm particularily stressed by dwelling on my upbringing.

We know it will never happen in our house because, as humans, we have an almost limitless ability to forget any hint of 'could' when it comes to horror. In those few moments when our forgetfulness fails us, we remain secure in our belief that we would never do such things to those we love. We know to an absolute certainty that anyone who could must not have been "in his right mind."

That's a common but still strange phrase -- "in his right mind." Everyone uses it as shorthand for things people do that are, large or small, somehow far outside what we normally expect them to do. Nobody that I know of takes it to the other side of that common phrase and looks at what a person does when he's "in his wrong mind."

Our right mind doesn't like to think it's got a wrong mind. It doesn't like to think it because it does indeed have one, and it is hardwired. Each of our right minds has a wrong mind and we are, with good reason, very, very frightened of it. So frightened that we don't think of it because to even think of our wrong mind gives it power, and it has far too much of that already. It has so much power that, once the wrong mind starts to control us, it takes, as they say, "a power greater than ourselves to restore us to sanity."

I grow increasingly uncertain about many things in this life, but of that one thing I once became, and today remain, certain of without a scintilla of a doubt. Like most men, I tend to forget about that greater power when mucking about in the detritus of daily life. That really doesn't matter. Sooner or later I am always given a miraculous moment on the small scale of ordinary life that lets me know in no uncertain terms that, for human beings, only "a power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity."

I'm trying to reach out to that "power" but my training for that was a High Episcopal upbringing and that's an institution I now consider totally morally bankrupt. I don't know, maybe I should grow dreadlocks and become Rastafari- I've heard the sacrament is very entertaining...

Seriously, we all have a dark side- it's how we deal with it that's the measure of us.

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What Treacher said

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So close as to be scary-

In The Know: Should The Government Stop Dumping Money Into A Giant Hole?

via Neptunus Lex

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Michael Yon-

A new President will soon begin to make critical decisions about Iraq and Afghanistan, the economic crisis at home, and countless other matters. While the Iraq war began, then boiled and finally cooled before President-elect Obama will be sworn into office on January 20th, 2009, the Afghanistan-Pakistan spectacle is just getting started. He was always a fierce opponent of our involvement in Iraq. And, as with so many Democrats in the Senate, he argued frequently, during the campaign, that we should have been focused on Afghanistan all along, because it is the real incubator of the international terrorist threat. Timing being everything, our new President will get his wish. Afghanistan now moves to center stage. The conflicts in Afghanistan and between Afghanistan and Pakistan have the simmering potential to overshadow anything we've seen in Iraq. Here are a few things I hope he understands:

Our enemies are winning. The enemies know it. We know it. Who are they? The Taliban, with its deep local roots is enemy number one. Al Qaeda is hanging around to make trouble. Some Paks, who don't want to see a thriving Pushtun state on their border, are our enemies. They fund and shelter the Taliban even though we rely on them to help us defeat it. Nothing is straightforward in this part of the world. We have other enemies in Afghanistan who hate the Taliban.

Most of our allies are not very helpful. With the exception of the British, Canadians, Dutch and a few others such as the Aussies, we are not fighting this with an "A-team" of international allies. With a few exceptions, our allies on the ground are comprised of several dozens of countries that mostly refuse to fight. The bulk of NATO amounts to little more than a "Taliban" Piñata. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is proving nearly worthless and provides no credible threat to Armed Opposition Groups (AOGs) in Afghanistan. Most of the NATO member countries seem to break out in a cold sweat at the mere mention of "Taliban." They piled in when the war looked easy, and largely humanitarian. But now that it's getting harder and more dangerous, they would like to pile out.

Welcome to the real world Mr. Obama.

Posted by Jay-Dubya at 08:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

At Power and Control is an immensely sober post on how well our nation's War on Drugs is going-

The War On Drugs has turned into a shooting war. In fact it has been a shooting war for quite some time in Afghanistan. So how is that working out? Not well.

*******

So there it is. Opium growing and heroin smuggling are financing the Taliban. So what makes a pile of vegetables worth its weight in gold? Prohibition. Those DEA guys are economic and military geniuses. Did I mention that they managed to increase the area of poppy growth in Afghanistan by 59%? Yes I did.

*******

How about a little closer to home? Mexico. It seems that Mexico is having a few drug problems too.

Mexico in some ways is the most worrying place in the Western hemisphere. A low-level civil war between the drug cartels and the federal government has been fought over the past two years, and the cartels are winning. Senior Mexican officials charged with suppression of the cartels have been moving their families quietly out of the country.

Wow. A narco state on our very own border. I wonder how the DEA never anticipated that. No doubt a failure of intelligence. Of the brains kind.

As they say, Read The Whole Thing. We need a radical rethinking of how we're going about this. I'm not recommending or encouraging drug use- far from it, I barely escaped that cage in times past. But when something is not working and has not worked for generations shouldn't we be looking for another way?

Posted by Jay-Dubya at 08:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Lawrence Livermore Laboratories has discovered the heaviest element yet known to science.

The new element, Governmentium (Gv), has one neutron, 25 assistant neutrons, 88 deputy neutrons, and 198 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312.

These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons.

Since Governmentium has no electrons, it is inert; however, it can be detected, because it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. A tiny amount of Governmentium can cause a reaction that would normally take less than a second, to take from 4 days to 4 years to complete.

Governmentium has a normal half-life of 2- 6 years. It does not decay, but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places.

In fact, Governmentium's mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganization will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes.

With apologies to Glenn- Heh. Indeed.

Posted by Jay-Dubya at 07:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In Flanders Fields
By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army

IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Posted by Jay-Dubya at 12:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Scalzi says it well-

Both of them are just, well, greasy

Posted by Jay-Dubya at 07:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Insty's take on The One's first appointment

Emanuel will serve as Obama's hatchet-man and Dr. No, but the main targets will be Congressional Democrats and Democratic interest groups. Obama realizes that he's promised a lot more than he can deliver, and Emanuel's job will be to stave off all the claimants who -- as they realize that too -- will try to get to him before it's too late. Obama can stay the good cop, while Emanuel will be the bad. Republicans flatter themselves if they think they'll be the focus of Emanuel's attentions; they'll be an afterthought.

Yup.

Posted by Jay-Dubya at 07:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Steve White at Rantburg says it well with this-

First, congratulations to President-elect Barack Obama. He will be the 44th president of the United States. His life is a remarkable journey and a testament to how far America has come. We're a fair, decent, tolerant, open-minded nation, and once again we demonstrate the old adage that "anyone can become President."

President Obama will deserve our support when he's right and our loyal opposition when he's wrong. Unlike some Democrats four and eight years ago, there will be no derogatory, childish name-calling from us conservatives. It was unseemly when the Democrats attacked George Bush they way they did, and it would be just as unseemly for us to do so now. We won't file for impeachment the first day Barack Obama is in office. We won't insult his intelligence. We will not pursue idiotic conspiracy theories.

The Democrats sounded insane over the last eight years and somehow got away with it. Republicans sounded insane in the later part of the 1990s and managed to get away with it.

Republicans won't be so lucky in the future. So we won't act insane. There cannot and must not be an 'Obama Derangement Syndrome'.

President Obama is going to need a loyal opposition. Joe Biden was both right and wrong when he said that "Obama would be tested." That's absolutely correct, but it will not be President Obama who will be tested, it will be America that is tested. If we waver then we, not just he, will flunk that test, and we'll be worse off because of it. America and American lives will be on the line. So when the challenge comes, we are the loyal opposition.

Pray for our country. RTWT here.

Posted by Jay-Dubya at 12:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, Lileks pretty well encapsulates my feelings right now:

Seriously, though: congratulations to President-elect Obama. Right or wrong - and I hope for more of the former, obviously - he's my President now, dammit, and I'm not going to spend four years treating him with the contempt the Kos side heaped on Chimpy McPretzelchoker. He could turn out to be a horrible President. He could turn out to be a great one. History pushes people in unexpected directions.

More to come, of course, but let's not spoil the moment.

Word.

Posted by Jay-Dubya at 07:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From Glenn, an old(er) story about John McCain-

A nurse entered and seemed surprised to find anyone there, and it wasn't long before I found out why: Almost no one visits anymore. In his time, which was not very long ago, Mo Udall was one of the most-sought-after men in the Democratic Party. Yet as he dies in a veterans hospital a few miles from the Capitol, he is visited regularly only by a single old political friend, John McCain. "He's not going to wake up this time," McCain said.

On the way out of the parking lot, McCain recalled what it was like to be a nobody called upon by a somebody. As he did, his voice acquired the same warmth that colored Russell Feingold's speech when he described the first call from John McCain. "When you called Feingold … " I started to ask him. But before I could, he interrupted. "Yeah," he says, "I thought of Mo." And then, for maybe the third time that morning, McCain spoke of how it affected him when Udall took him in hand. It was a simple act of affection and admiration, and for that reason it meant all the more to McCain. It was one man saying to another, We disagree in politics but not in life.

The man is more real man than anyone today cares to admit.

Posted by Jay-Dubya at 07:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)