"The ultimate example of an effective message, is sticking metal tableware into an electrical outlet. The result is instant, jarring, and for all practical purposes, certain. Very, very few people do that twice.
"For an example at the other end of the spectrum, I guess we have President Obama and Afghanistan. What’ll happen next? Nobody knows. President Sort-Of-God has to go off and think some more.
"Over the past few days I’ve fantasized repeatedly about a world in which homicide is punished so rapidly, that the embalmer flies out to take care of the bodies of the victim and the murderer on the same trip. The point is — allowing that such a thing was possible, just imagine what would happen to the murder rate if we lived in such a world. By the same token, imagine how safe the country would be, if attacking us was an exercise similar to pissing on an electric fence.
"This is what is under assault right now: The clarity of the messages. Justice delayed equals justice denied. There has to be more time, more thinking, more complexity, more obfuscation, more apologia, more…whatever. More ingredients in the stew. More of anything but action. -- via Morgan @ House of Eratosthenes]]>
“What happened at Fort Hood was a tragedy,” said Gen. George Casey, the U.S. Army’s Chief of Staff, “but I believe it would be an even greater tragedy if our diversity becomes a casualty here.” A “greater tragedy” than 14 dead and dozens of wounded? Translating from the original brain-addled multicult-speak, the Army chief of staff is saying that the same fatuous prostration before marshmallow illusions that led to the “tragedy” must remain in place. If it leads to occasional mass murder, well, hopefully it can be held to what cynical British civil servants used to call, during the Northern Irish “Troubles,” “an acceptable level of violence.” Fourteen dead is evidently acceptable. A hundred and forty? Fourteen hundred? I guess we’ll find out." -- Tragedy or Scandal? by Mark Steyn on National Review Online]]>
Yesterday 4 Deputy US Marshals were detailed to serve an arrest warrant on Philip Gordon 63 of Carroll County in west Georgia. Mr Gordon refused to allow the Marshals entrance to his gated property whereupon the gate was breached using necessary force. During the process Mr Gordon’s 2 Labrador retrievers charged the federal agents and were dispatched. Mr Gordon refused to submit to arrest and brandished an assault rifle accusing the Marshals of trespassing before retreating into his home. The Marshals summoned backup from the local Carroll County Sheriff’s office and two of the 6 responding deputies refused to cooperate in serving the lawful warrant. They were immediately relieved of duty. Additional backup of federal agents in the Atlanta field offices of the FBI and BATFE surrounded the Gordon residence. Repeated demands for Gordon to surrender went unheeded and chemical agents were introduced into the structure. An hour later an unconscious Gordon was taken into custody and booked into the Fulton county jail on the warrant charging refusal to pay the $15,000.00 penalty for failure to maintain a government approved medical insurance policy. --]]>Francis W. PorrettoLeonidas - Eternity Road
and will demand to know who is responsible, and they will therefore seek out the variable with the highest degree of correlation. But if some of the variables are hidden by law, they'll use the (less precise) visible ones: race, ethnicity, gender, religion, national origin. Every Leftist and Imam professes to be afraid that Ethnic Profiling or Religious Profiling is coming, but if they continue to prevent the rest of American from engaging in Ideological Profiling, then Ethnic Profiling is what we're going to get. Lots of innocents will be harmed, but Americans will feel safer and think "It's the best we could do in a bad situation" -- Chicago Boyz » Blog Archive » Quote of the Day]]>
Promotions board: "You're dishonorably discharged!"
2nd Army officer: "I want to cut off your infidel head and pour boiling oil down your throat!"
Promotions board: "How'd you like to be a major?"
from Velociworld
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Glenn Beck's "The Christmas Sweater: A Picture Book" will debut at the top of the New York Times children's bestseller list tomorrow. This, according to his publisher, "Makes Beck First Author in History to Have Books Debut at #1 On Four Different NYT Bestseller Lists." -- Beck for kids - Ben Smith - POLITICO.com
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Trere is chatter about the spelling This the one I chose for fun. I looked up on Amazon and saw there are two books being released the same day Check the book by the Nation magazine. This isn't an item I spent time developing, it came to mind I did it.]]>
“True, the actor was outspoken in his Confederate sympathies and viewed himself as a Southerner,” said someone who knew him, “but that was no reason he might want Lincoln to be dead.” The day before he went on his shooting spree, Booth hoisted a big Confederate flag outside his hotel room. After he leaped onto the stage he shouted, "Thus ever to tyrants!" the motto of the rebel state of Virginia.
The New York Times reported that Booth was psychologically unstable and was frightened of the Civil War coming to an end and having to face a peacetime actors’ surplus. “His political views had nothing to do with the motives for this tragic act,” it said, quoting experts. -- RubinReports:]]>
This phrase would describe the turn of events where a seemingly integrated Muslim-American--a friendly donut vendor in New York, say, or an officer in the U.S. Army at Fort Hood--discards his apparent integration into American society and elects to vindicate his religion in an act of messianic violence against his fellow Americans. This would appear to be what happened in the case of Maj. Hasan.
The difference between "going postal," in the conventional sense, and "going Muslim," in the sense that I suggest, is that there would not necessarily be a psychological "snapping" point in the case of the imminently violent Muslim; instead, there could be a calculated discarding of camouflage--the camouflage of integration--in an act of revelatory catharsis. In spite of suggestions by some who know him that he had a history of "harassment" as a Muslim in the army, Maj. Hasan did not "snap" in the "postal" manner. He gave away his possessions on the morning of his day of murder. He even gave away--to a neighbor--a packet of frozen broccoli that he did not wish to see go to waste, even as he mapped in his mind the laying waste of lives at Fort Hood. His was a meticulous, even punctilious "departure." -- Forbes.com]]>
that the Ft. Hood massacre means not very much at all. Megan McArdle writes that "there is absolutely no political lesson to be learned from this." James Fallows says: "The shootings never mean anything. Forty years later, what did the Charles Whitman massacre 'mean'? A decade later, do we 'know' anything about Columbine?" And the Atlantic Wire has already investigated the motivation for the shooting, and released its preliminary findings. Of Nidal Malik Hasan, the Wire states: "A 39-year-old Army psychiatrist, he appears to have not been motivated by his Muslim religion, his Palestinian heritage (he is American by nationality), or any related political causes."
It seems, though, that when an American military officer who is a practicing Muslim allegedly shoots forty of his fellow soldiers who are about to deploy to the two wars the United States is currently fighting in Muslim countries, some broader meaning might, over time, be discerned, especially if the officer did, in fact, yell "Allahu Akbar" while murdering his fellow soldiers, as some soldiers say he did. -- When Muslims Commit Violence - Jeffrey Goldberg]]>
"All Americans have had it with these mass murderers, whether formal terrorist plotters or individual assassins. I promise you we will find out what motivates a Major Hasan -- and do my best to ensure that there are no more Major Hasans in our future." -- Victor Hanson]]>
Today you will not smoke in a pub -- or smoke at all -- even though those in charge might. Tomorrow the government will set your house temperature for you, while keeping their own set to their comfort levels. They will tell you how much money you may fairly earn, while "they" are not quite so limited. Next year your son will be forced to participate in mandatory volunteerism, and so will your mother. Soon you will be advised to abandon your hate-filled intolerant church for the approved and correct one. Someday, you may be asked to bow before someone and you will have to say "yes" and then live with yourself, or say "no" and live with those consequences. The banality of slavery -- it is almost a tedious thing. -- The shadow of the jackboot @ The Anchoress | A First Things Blog]]>