Category: Uncategorized

come on get down with the sickness

Madness is the gift that has been given to me.

That’s Disturbed, Bane, the best and most evil band of the last four years. I had a tough time choosing between songs for the chapter headings in The Wrath of Angels, since I always limit myself to a maximum of two chapters per band. Uh-wha-ah-ah-ah. Voices is the song I used in those little MP3 experiments from a few months ago.

I can hear the voice but I don’t want to listen

Strap me down and tell me I’ll be all right.

I can feel the subliminal need to be down with the voice

And make everything all right.

It’s actually one of the better descriptions of demonic possession I’ve ever read. I think the lyricist is a preacher’s son gone bad or something like that. Great music, though, it was the sort of thing I wanted to do with Psykosonik, but Paul and Dan fell in love with The Orb and we ended up going with stronger trance and rave influences instead.

Hindrocket kicks sand in Jon Klein’s face on CNBC:

Mr. JOHN HINDERAKER (Powerline.com Co-founder): Well, here’s how it happened. I would say this is not really a big exception to the way that we and other blogs operate all the time. I think that this story illustrates the medium, the Internet, at its best, but the same kind of thing has happened many times.

It started on the morning of September 9th. We’re a group blog; there are three of us who do Powerline. My partner, Scott Johnson, got up early in the morning, and one of the first things he did was to check all the e-mails that readers had sent to us overnight looking for something interesting to follow up on. And one of those e-mails quoted from and linked to a post which somebody called BuckHead had done on a message thread at the Free Republic site, which is basically a message board.

BORGER: It’s a very conservative site, we should say.

Mr. HINDERAKER: It’s a conservative site, yeah…

BORGER: Yes.

Mr. HINDERAKER: …basically a message board. And Scott thought it was interesting because this guy had looked at these documents which had just become available online, and he made some very good points about the font and the appearance and so on of the documents, said, ‘I think they’re forgeries.’ Scott was intrigued by that, so he put up a quote and a link to the original post on Free Republic, and he said, ‘Hey, anybody else out there among our readers have any information about this?’ Well, that opened the floodgates. Over the ensuing hours, we received hundreds…

BORGER: Right.

Mr. HINDERAKER: …and hundreds and hundreds of e-mails from readers…

BORGER: Right.

Mr. HINDERAKER: …not all of them valuable, but many of them from people who had a remarkable knowledge of military protocol of the early 1970s, type fonts and typewriters and so on…

BORGER: OK.

Mr. HINDERAKER: …and other subject that were relevant.

BORGER: Well, and the rest is obviously history. Now, Jon Klein, let me ask you–it turns out that this blogger BuckHead is Harry McDougald, who is a very conservative lawyer from Atlanta. Who holds the bloggers responsible here in this battle to control the media?

Mr. JON KLEIN (Former CBS News Executive Vice President): Well, to hear them tell it, they hold themselves responsible. And, you know, that’s fine as far as it goes; it’s just not any kind of a third-party or any kind of a reliable check or balance against them. They are, you know, journals of opinion. And if they’re taken that way, they can be useful. But we can’t confuse the opinion of a guy shooting off an e-mail from BuckHead, Georgia, as fact.

Mr. HINDERAKER: I don’t understand that, Jonathan. Are you saying that Republicans somehow don’t have standing to point out forgeries?

One thing I couldn’t help noting is how the host kept saying “very conservative”. Have you ever heard any talking head utter the words “very liberal”? I can’t think of one example. I wonder if Powerline is going to start painting silhouettes on their fuselage soon.

I’m feeling a bit shattered here. Not because my case against interment is the least bit weakened, but my faith in one of my favorite conservative writers certainly is. Thomas Sowell, who at least did have the stones to respond, replied in part thusly:

Having read a number of accounts of the relocation over the years, I cannot recall any that was either as well documented or as well reasoned as Michelle Malkin’s.

The worst part is that he wrote this despite my sending him an example which proves that Malkin didn’t do the slightest bit of research with regards to the military necessity. Can you imagine him accepting a similar defense of FDR’s seizure of the nation’s gold supply, justified on the basis of a diary entry by William H. Wooden, FDR’s Secretary of the Treasury, stating that he believed the seizure to be economically necessary?

I’ve received numerous emails from conservatives, in various degrees of emotional upset that range from panties mildly twisted to totally rabid frothing at the mouth, expressing the opinion that I should not attack a ‘conservative” commentator because she is “on our side”.

Suffice it to say that I strongly disagree.

This is precisely the sort of behavior that the right so often condemns on the part of the left. We rip into leftists who won’t criticize John Kerry’s flip-flops, liberals who won’t admit to media bias, losers who still think Dan Rather just might have, if not a case, at least an innocent explanation. To turn around and say that a disingenuous and ignorant charlatan of the right should get a free pass on an abuse of the truth is outrageously hypocritical and incredibly short-sighted.

It would be one thing if I was nit-picking and poking at minor mistakes. But when the sole basis of an entire thesis is in error; this is not something that any intellectually honest individual can overlook, nor should he. Furthermore, no one who is on the side of the socialist FDR, the elevation of the interests of the central state over the rights of the individual and complete intellectual dishonesty, is on mine.

My only side is the truth and the Truth. I have no lasting allegiance to any other party or creed, and I do my best to follow where they lead. If that means that I travel alone, that I stand alone, then I will do so without hesitation.

Always outnumbered, never outgunned.

EN writes:

I talked to a DC-based Bushivek campaign worker on Friday morning and she said they are stunned at the number of people who are telling them they will not vote for Bush.

The Bush doctrine, such as it is, has failed. He’ll still win re-election because John Kerry combines the worst characteristics of Michael Dukakis and Bob Dole with a smarmy, Clintonian lack of principle, but he’s practically a lame duck even prior to his second term. JG, who is in Iraq, states:

There’s enough troops over here to take care of the insurgency. The main problem is the politicians. Post Abu Ghraib, the most important intelligence gathering asset has been hamstrung. Also, we’ve been at the brink of destroying Sadr and his militia at least a half dozen times, but politicians have intervened and Sadr escapes and rearms with Iranian hardware.

I actually have to explain that statement a little more. We’ve got enough troops to destroy any resistance over there. Our going into Najaf, Sadr City, Falujah – we kill these people by the score, literally hundreds and maybe lose one guy. When (if) we get intel ID’ing a bad guy, a squad is sufficient to take down the house and take him into custody.

What we don’t have enough troops for is patrolling the borders (where Syria and Iran are shipping in weapons by the ton, where half of these suicide bombers come from), patrolling ALL the streets, putting check points all over the place and searching suspicious vehicles. We’re trying to get the Iraqis to do that, but insurgents are whacking Iraqi Interim Gov’t ministers regularly and take out Iraqi Police by the dozen at recruiting/training stations. It doesn’t help that the Ministry of Interior doesn’t pay these guys except every now and then, half of them are unarmed, many are not in uniform (I’ve got pictures) – the training is cursory for both the Iraqi Police and Iraqi National guard…so half the time in a firefight they run away.

I don’t believe we have the political will to do what needs to be done over here – so we’ve already lost this war…and I think any other future war with a dedicated resistance.

We’ll find out soon enough if there are enough troops or not, if the generals start requesting more troops once the next enemy offensive starts. But it’s been clear from the start that there has been no plan to win, no end game, no clear-cut definition of victory against which progress can be measured.

I fully expect that history will regard Bush as a incompetent Commander-in-Chief who was lucky to escape full responsibility for his disastrous decisions. Leading a nation into half-hearted, undeclared war is a guarantee of ultimate failure; Bush would have gotten away with it had he been content with Saddam’s scalp. I see many correlations between the administration’s decision to expand their goals into full-blown nation-building with the IJN’s decision to extend their defensive shield to the Aleutians and Midway. In both cases, easy early success led to hubris and a fatal error.

My primary concern at this point is that only a second 9/11 could possibly give the American people any more tolerance for war. If I can see this, presumably so can those internal enemies from whom our military forces, and the President, have sworn to defend the Constitution….

JDR asks:

And what is your view on the “military necessity” question in respect of the few million muslims in this country, many if not most of whom have directed hardly a scintilla of criticism at islamic fanatics that are commiting mindless attrocities 24/7? Did 9/11 give rise to such a military necessity? Will the next islamist attack on our soil do so?

This raises a fair point. On the one hand, technological advances have significantly increased the striking power of a small group of men, or even an individual, while rendering conventional military defenses relatively useless. To a certain extent, the very notion of “military necessity” is not applicable, as massed troops are more appropriately classified as potential targets than preventative measures. And the lack of criticism is indicative of nothing in and of itself; this, too, has no relation to military matters.

Carroll Quigley, in Tragedy And Hope, wrote of the cycle of martial technology. His theory was that as individuals obtain armaments that are basically the equivalent of professional arms, the power of central government declines. Governments, of course, fight this, but fighting against the technological imperative is always doomed, for governments as it is for individuals, businesses and societies.

My belief is that the next large terrorist attack, whatever the source, will have the result of inflaming the American populace, but unexpectedly, a part of its anger will be focused against the government and its failure to even consider the immigration issue, in addition to the resident illegal aliens. It will not have the expected effect of creating an increased demand for an expansion of external warfare. The old rules are changing, but as Prechter states, government is reliably the last institution to realize this. Therefore, I suspect that the next major attack will cause the administration to initially advocate more war, but the frightened public, having lost its faith in offensive war as a reliable defense, will instead cause/allow them to focus on further destroying civil liberties.

I have no problem with deporting aliens, legal or illegal, of any race, creed or color, but I am 100 percent opposed to allowing the government to disobey the law and violate the rights of its citizens under the aegis of security. That way lies the unleashing of the red hand.

It’s official. Kellen Winslow Jr. IS Jeremy Shockey. Loud-mouthed, overrated and injury-prone to boot. I never bought into the Shockey myth from the start, and I didn’t buy Winslow either. Give me Bubba Franks or Daniel Graham. All they do is catch touchdowns.

2 catches, four yards, 2 touchdowns. That’s a good TE line. And no, I don’t want to talk about the Vikings. I still think they’re a better team than Philadelphia, and they’ll prove it when it counts. I’m not happy about their red zone struggles, but that’s a solvable problem.

Fantasy was horrible, as I got trounced by Space Bunny’s team. Pick-16 started off brutal, but we finished up a respectable 9-7. 20-12 overall through Week 2.

George, who no doubt has a poster of Malkin over his bed, froths at the mouth:

Your attempts to paint Ms Malkin into a corner of your own choosing is despicable and indefensible. Your setting of a date for a proposed “debate” is despicable and indefensible. Your presumption in selecting a date for such a confrontation is nothing short of brazen-faced arrogance.

Setting a date! Offering to reschedule! The ignominy!

The columns in which you have attacked Ms Malkin have made it startlingly clear to any “intellectually honest individual”, to use your own phrase, that you truly have no desire to debate Ms Malkin but in fact have an hysterical wish to publically humiliate and embarrass one of the finest conservative writers in the United States currently reaching a very wide and varied readership.

No, I’d love to debate her in order to publically expose her astonishingly ignorant case. Unfortunately for her, I can now do it regardless of whether she’s there or not. And if the finest conservative writers are defending the elevation of central state authority over the Constitution and standing up for FDR, America is doomed. Perhaps Malkin’s next book will be entitled Lenin: The Misunderstood Freedom Fighter, written without so much as a glance at any of Vladimir Ilyich’s copious writings or the history of the October Revolution.

You may note that my tone has grown more openly contemptuous in the last day; that’s because I’ve learned how little Malkin actually knows about the military context in which she attempts to place her research on Magic. The term “less than zero” springs to mind. I’d originally thought she’d made a serious, but understandable mistake, however, the extent of her ignorance is so great and so easily demonstrable, the two people I’ve told about my latest discovery were both wondering what on Earth she was thinking when she decided to write the book. It almost embarrassed ME and I’m certainly no fan of hers.

To quote Hacker, a reader of Malkin’s book who has emailed me a few times to poke and probe for weaknesses in my case: “Well, you’ve convinced me about the lack of military necessity to do the evacuation. I also did some additional research on my own and can find nothing to refute what you’ve said.”

I’m afraid that after spending five minutes actually looking at the case that Malkin makes for herself, as opposed the case I assumed she’d be making, I have to say that there is about a zero percent chance she’ll show up to debate. I spoke too soon when I said there’s no shame in making a mistake. Sometimes, it depends on the order of magnitude.

Let me put it this way. If it takes me more than 30 seconds to demonstrate that a) Malkin made absolutely no attempt whatsoever to examine the question of military necessity for herself, and, b) that she is demonstrably less qualified to make any statement with regards to military necessity than she is to be the offensive coordinator for the Minnesota Vikings, and, c) cause the moderators to burst out laughing in the process, I’ll be hugely shocked. I called Big Chilly; there was a moment of silence and the first words out of his mouth were: Are you kidding me?

It’s a good thing I enjoyed the research so much, because I didn’t even need to do most of it to discredit her. She discredits herself with her own words, not just badly, but to the point that even her biggest fans are going to be cringing with embarrassment. Some of you probably think I’m talking smack, others are already hearing the blades go snicker-snack. Tune in to the Northern Alliance on Saturday and you’ll understand very quickly why I am supremely and completely confident of my case.

Robert Novak writes:

Whether Bush or Kerry is elected, the president or president-elect will have to sit down immediately with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The military will tell the election winner there are insufficient U.S. forces in Iraq to wage effective war. That leaves three realistic options: Increase overall U.S. military strength to reinforce Iraq, stay with the present strength to continue the war, or get out.

Well-placed sources in the administration are confident Bush’s decision will be to get out. They believe that is the recommendation of his national security team and would be the recommendation of second-term officials. An informed guess might have Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state, Paul Wolfowitz as defense secretary and Stephen Hadley as national security adviser. According to my sources, all would opt for a withdrawal….

This messy new Iraq is viewed by Bush officials as vastly preferable to Saddam’s police state, threatening its neighbors and the West. In private, some officials believe the mistake was not in toppling Saddam but in staying there for nation building after the dictator was deposed.

I’m glad some officials are starting to believe that. I could have told them that from the start. If you don’t have a game plan for victory, you will not win. If you can’t even bring yourself to identify the enemy, you will not win. If your objective is not possible, you will not win.

The wild card, however, is Iran. Ledeen and other neocons are still pushing for correcting the conflict by expanding it, which would be an amazingly stupid thing to do. If their nuke program is a problem, then take it out or wait and let Israel take it out*, but whatever you do, don’t try to expand a doomed nation-building program. Nations cannot be built! The very concept is a contradiction in terms. Germany was a nation prior to WWII. So was Japan. Iraq is something more akin to a peripheral state in the House of Islam and a tripartite one at that, without a dictator to hold it together by horrific force, it is no more a nation than the former Yugoslavia.

Perhaps now we can return to the immigration issue and other matters that might actually help the America meet the challenge of resurgent Islam without committing the usual suicide through security.

*Some very inobservant people say that we cannot permit this, because then the Arabs will hate the Israelis infinity plus one, or perhaps even double-dog infinity. Personally, I suspect the administration’s apparent lack of concern about the Iranian program is because they already know that Israel is planning to take it out before it goes online.