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Posts Tagged ‘idiotarian’

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The foolish and credulous among us

Posted by Richard on March 20, 2007

Four years into the struggle for a free, democratic Iraq, streets, plazas, and public places around the country were again filled by those who oppose that struggle (dwindling numbers of them, I'm happy to note). Gerard Van der Leun observed the demonstrators, and had trouble concealing his contempt:

Four years in. An inch of time. Four years in and the foolish and credulous among us yearn to get out. Their feelings require it. The power of their Holy Gospel of "Imagine" compels them. Their overflowing pools of compassion for the enslavers of women, the killers of homosexuals, the beheaders of reporters, and the incinerators of men and women working quietly at their desks, rise and flood their minds until their eyes flow with crocodile tears while their mouths emit slogans made of cardboard. They believe the world is run on wishes and that they will always have three more.
…

Four years into the most gentle war ever fought, a war fought on the cheap at every level, a war fought to avoid civilian harm rather than maximize it. Picnic on the grass at Shiloh. Walk the Western Front. Speak to the smoke of Dresden. Kneel down and peek into the ovens of Auschwitz. Sit on the stones near ground zero at Hiroshima and converse with the shadows singed into the wall. Listen to those ghost whisperers of war.

Four years in and the people of the Perfect World ramble through the avenues of Washington, stamping their feet and holding their breath, having their tantrums, and telling all who cannot avoid listening that "War is bad for children and other living things." They have flowers painted on their cheeks. For emphasis. Just in case you thought that war was good for children and other living things.

There were children and other living things on the planes that flew into the towers. They all went into the fire and the ash just the same. But they, now, are not important. Nor is the message their deaths still send us when we listen. That message is to be silenced. The rising brand new message is "All we are say-ing is give…." And it is always off-key.

Go. Read the rest. Please.

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Welcome to Bizarro World

Posted by Richard on March 16, 2007

Welcome to Bizarro World, where one of today's most ruthless butchers confesses/brags about his atrocities, and moonbats and media outlets everywhere denounce his captors, accuse them of crimes, joke about his terror plots, doubt his guilt, sympathize with his plight, and defend his humanity. 

Khalid Sheik Mohammed seemed to be especially proud of one particular atrocity:

"I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi, Pakistan," Mohammed is quoted as saying in a transcript of a military hearing at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, released by the Pentagon.

"For those who would like to confirm, there are pictures of me on the Internet holding his head," he added.

There are indeed. In fact, the video is readily available. Should you watch it? Jeff Jacoby addressed that difficult question at the time:

June 13, 2002 — The video of Daniel Pearl's beheading is searing and nightmarish, but the key to its power is not that it shows him dead. It is that it shows him alive. You look into his eyes, you hear his voice, you all but smell his fear as he tells the camera what his captors are forcing him to say.

"My name is Daniel Pearl. I'm a Jewish American from… Encino, California, USA. I come from, on my father's side, a family of Zionists. My father is Jewish. My mother is Jewish. I'm Jewish. My family follows Judaism. We've made numerous family visits to Israel…"

The three-minute video is a piece of Islamist pornography: A frightened Jew — even better, a frightened American Jew — confesses his Jewish roots and denounces US foreign policy. Then his head is cut off and brandished triumphantly as English words scroll up the screen: "And if our demands are not met, this scene shall be repeated again and again."

When CBS aired the first part of that video, Pearl's mother was outraged. Jacoby acknowledged the family's pain, but saw things differently:

Who cannot understand her fury and anguish? Whose heart doesn't go out to the devastated young widow, whose infant son will never know his father?

And yet this video, depraved and evil as it is, does something for Daniel Pearl that has been done for virtually none of Al Qaeda's other victims: It makes him real. It allows him to be seen as a flesh-and-blood human being, a guy with a face and a voice and a house in Encino. Countless Americans who never knew him in life will experience Pearl's death as a sickening kick in the gut. His murder is an atrocity they will take personally — because they will have seen it with their own eyes.

Islamist terrorists butchered more than 3,000 innocent men, women, and children last Sept. 11. And before them there had been more than a thousand other victims — in the Marine barracks in Beirut, on Pan Am 103, in the first World Trade Center attack in 1993, at the Khobar Towers barracks, in the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, on board the USS Cole. Yet who, their families and friends excepted, knows what any of them looked like? Who remembers any of their names?

The Pearl family's ire is understandable. But I wonder if it isn't the loved ones of all the other victims who have the better reason to be angry.
…

There are times when no good purpose is served by publicizing a terrible image. The repeated broadcast of race car driver Dale Earnhardt's fatal crash last year was gratuitous. Nothing was gained by replaying, over and over, the beating of Rodney King.

But the beheading of Daniel Pearl is different. It conveys with a force no words can match the undiluted malignancy, the sheer evil, of the enemy we are fighting. Yes, it is a horror. Yes, it is barbaric. But we are at war with barbarians, and what they did to Pearl, they would gladly do to any one of us. This is no time to be covering our eyes.

I won't tell you that you should watch the video. It's pretty awful. Maybe you don't need to in order to fully appreciate who and what Khalid Sheik Mohammed is. But if you're one of those who feels sympathy for the man or worries about him being robbed of his humanity — well, I hope you do watch. So you can see that he wasn't robbed of his humanity — he rejected it.

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Trying to shut up the troops

Posted by Richard on February 2, 2007

The "chicken hawk" meme that’s long been popular with the left is bad enough. It’s the contemptible claim that only those who’ve been in combat are entitled to support the war, and that those of us who support the war and haven’t served either need to enlist or shut up. But now we have a new anti-war meme — courtesy of Bill Arkin, a journalist and "military analyst" for NBC News who blogs at The Washington Post — that’s stunningly vile and disgusting.

Apparently, Arkin noticed that the vast majority of military people do support the war (we Fighting Keyboardists pointed this out a long time ago). He’s sick of listening to them and thinks they should shut up. He cited a few examples —  soldiers in Iraq speaking out in a recent NBC Nightly News report — and responded with ill-concealed contempt and loathing (emphasis added):

These soldiers should be grateful that the American public, which by all polls overwhelmingly disapproves of the Iraq war and the President’s handling of it, do still offer their support to them, and their respect.

Through every Abu Ghraib and Haditha, through every rape and murder, the American public has indulged those in uniform, accepting that the incidents were the product of bad apples or even of some administration or command order.
…

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?

I can imagine some post-9/11 moment, when the American people say enough already with the wars against terrorism and those in the national security establishment feel these same frustrations. In my little parable, those in leadership positions shake their heads that the people don’t get it, that they don’t understand that the threat from terrorism, while difficult to defeat, demands commitment and sacrifice and is very real because it is so shadowy, that the very survival of the United States is at stake. Those Hoovers and Nixons will use these kids in uniform as their soldiers. If it weren’t about the United States, I’d say the story would end with a military coup where those in the know, and those with fire in their bellies, would save the nation from the people.

But it is the United States, and the recent NBC report is just an ugly reminder of the price we pay for a mercenary – oops sorry, volunteer – force that thinks it is doing the dirty work.

First of all, only a postmodern leftist worshipping at the feet of Chomsky and Said would interpret a soldier’s simple criticism of his viewpoint as a demand that "we should … roll over and play dead, … and give up our rights …"

It’s clear that Arkin despises people in the military and suspects that many of them are bloodthirsty goons who enjoy murdering and raping civilians and would be happy to turn the U.S. into a military dictatorship. His hatred has become so intense that he can no longer heed the advice he gave himself when he began the blog (emphasis added):

My basic philosophy is that government is more incompetent than diabolical, that the military gets way too much of a free ride (memo to self: Don’t say anything bad about the troops), and that official secrecy is the greatest threat citizens actually face today.

Mind you, I think he was off to a bad start with that philosopy. It starts out all right, but "official secrecy" (whatever that means) is our biggest threat? Not the people who want to blow up our airplanes, trains, and buildings? Not the movement that wants to subjugate us all under its 7th-century laws, turn women into chattel, and stone homosexuals and adulterers to death? Interesting perspective you have there, Arkin.

So, according to Arkin and his leftist friends, who has moral standing to comment on the war? Those of us who haven’t served have no right to speak out because we’re chicken hawks, hypocritically asking others to do what we haven’t done ourselves. The troops have no right to speak out because they’re mercenaries lusting for blood and ready to institute a fascist dictatorship. The people who served in the past and support the war have no right to speak out because … well, I’m not sure, exactly, but I think it’s because they’re still mercenaries at heart, lusting for blood and dictatorship.

Apparently, Arkin and his friends think that only those who’ve served in the past, but who now oppose war, are entitled to voice their opinions — people like Jack Murtha and John Effin’ Kerry.

And he has the gall to worry about us silencing him?
 

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Peace movement

Posted by Richard on November 20, 2006

The commitment to reason and dedication to science and logic that led some people to take World Jump Day seriously and that have always characterized the "reality-based community" have now led the Global Consciousness Project, in conjunction with Baring Witness, to promote a Synchronized Global Orgasm for Peace. Elaib Harvey at The Brussels Journal summed it up nicely:

At last a way to stop Islamofascism, war, earthquakes and President George W Bush. The Global Orgasm is obviously the way.

The idea seems to be if countless millions are reaching a state of sexual ecstasy simultaneously on Friday 22nd of December then world peace will break out, Bush will indeed discover that Osama is quite a cute fellow after all, and that nasty fellow Ahmedinejad in Tehran will discover that the Isrealis are utter sweethearts.

This is the First Annual Solstice Synchronized Global Orgasm for Peace, leading up to the December Solstice of 2012, when the Mayan Calendar ends with a new beginning.

For pity’s sake they even have a page pretending to prove the science – hosted at Princeton University!!

The "brains" behind this project are from Marin County, California — are you surprised?

You can’t make this stuff up.
 

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The Nixon-Reagan-King conspiracy

Posted by Richard on September 1, 2006

I thought that 9/11 nuts like Rand Fanshier and Spooked (with his rabbit fencing WTC model and United 93 pencil sketches) represented the ne plus ultra of whackjob conspiracy theorizing. But I guess I just hadn’t fully grasped the breadth and depth and glorious technicolor variety of loonieness that exists in the world.

Case in point: Steve Lightfoot called Hugh Hewitt’s radio show Friday, and he left Hewitt completely nonplussed. That’s pretty remarkable — Hewitt is one of the most consistently plussed people I can think of.

But it’s hard not to lose your plussiness when someone explains in rapid-fire fashion that the Bush lies and Iraq war tie back to the murder of John Lennon, which was perpetrated by Stephen King with the help of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.

If you’re amused, rather than angered or worried, by people like this, poke around Steve’s site. I especially liked The Killer’s alleged name and letter and the Footnotes and new Developments section. Here’s a taste from the first essay in the latter, "America the ugly":

The people of the San Francisco bay area will never live down the fact that,
when confronted with hard evidence that proves our government murdered John
Lennon, they ducked their duty to take to the streets and demand the arrest of
Stephen King. Before Nixon and Reagan died they failed to demand that they be put
on trial and jailed as well. For over twenty years the American public proved to
the watching world that now dislikes us, that we are anything but American
in practice.
As bad as raping a 14 year old girl then shooting her in the head three times,
then killing her family, including a 5 year old sister, then burning them all to
try to destroy the evidence of their conduct as just happened in Iraq involving
U.S. soldiers. That bad.
Right now you are letting our military help Israel do to the Arabs what we did to
the American indians. You are an ugly people.
I used to be just like you, too. I was raised on television, violence, selfish-
ness, greed and anti-intellectualism. When our government killed the Kennedy’s,
M.L.K., other black activists and rock stars I did nothing. It took the murders of
John Lennon and, later, John Balushi to get me off of my ugly ass and do something.
Many of you probably don’t know that Balushi’s assassin, Kathlyn Smith, was in the
same room with Lennon the night before he was shot in the back, but she was.
Incidentally, the writer of Animal House, Doug Kenny, was also killed that same
year and John Landis, the director of Animal House, almost lost his head with Vic
Morrow in that copter accident. So if some of you still think that that pyro-
technique exposion that almost blew Michael Jackson’s face off was just an ac-
cident, please pull your heads out of your stinky, ignorant, guilty asses right now.
Buddy Holly, Jim Morrison (Lennon was killed on his birthday), Bob Marley, Peter
Tosh, Jim Croce, Jimi Hendrix and many more cultural icons were probably murdered
by our government and your apathy and ignorance.

Whew! There’s a score or more essays, some of them less angry and dark — and more silly and fun. I only looked at a few, but I thought Clint Eastwood is No Good was especially amusing. Enjoy!

Don’t order his booklet, though — you don’t want Steve Lightfoot to have your name and address. 🙂
 

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The case for homeschooling, part 378

Posted by Richard on August 11, 2006

Mike Gallagher described a call to his radio show from someone who really needs to be hunted down and forced to make a career change:

She was calling from Colorado, and she chastised me for embracing violence as a solution to violence. “You right-wingers love blood and guts and you never have any sympathy for the other side”, she said. “The other side?” I asked. “You mean the terrorists?” She responded with a sneer in her voice: “You just don’t understand. They feel that WE’RE the terrorists. You conservatives are wrong in defining this war as something between good and evil.”

I had just about had enough. “Amanda, let me ask you something”, I said. “Do you consider the 19 hijackers of 9/11 evil?” Long pause. “No, I do not,” she replied. “We should look at ourselves to discover what we did to make them hate us so much. This is all our fault.”

Make no mistake, this woman was serious. I actually told her I hoped she was a comedienne, someone making a prank call to a national radio show. She assured me that she was not. So I had to ask her what she did for a living. Her answer will haunt me for a long, long time: “I’m a schoolteacher.”
 

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Has the world gone mad? Or only academia?

Posted by Richard on July 11, 2006

Speaking of moonbats, LGF posted a chunk of the press release from the University of Wisconsin-Madison explaining why Kevin Barrett would be teaching an introductory class on Islam. Barrett, a convert to Islam, believes that al-Qaeda is a CIA front and that the Bush administration blew up the World Trade Center towers. The UW-Madison Provost decided to let this whack job teach his theories to young skulls full of mush in order to defend free speech (emphasis added by LGF):

Farrell notes that a broader issue at play in the Barrett case is the UW-Madison’s long tradition of protecting classroom expression and encouraging students’ critical thinking by allowing analysis of even the most controversial ideas.

“We cannot allow political pressure from critics of unpopular ideas to inhibit the free exchange of ideas. That classroom interaction is central to this university’s mission and to the expansion of knowledge. Silencing that exchange now would only open the door to more onerous and sweeping restrictions,” he says.

“It is in cases like this – difficult cases involving unconventional ideas – that we define our principles and determine our future,” Farrell adds. “Instead of restricting politically unpopular speech, we will take our cue from the bronze plaque in front of Bascom Hall that calls for the ‘continual and fearless sifting and winnowing’ of ideas.”

I saw part of an interview with Barrett on Fox News earlier. He struck me as a committed Islamofascist (Wahhabi or Salafist), not just a tin-foil-hat nutjob like Spooked. Of course, I could be wrong. Heck, Spooked is a pseudonym — Kevin Barrett could be Spooked!

I want to ask UW-Madison Provost Patrick Farrell how he plans to promote free speech, explore "even the most controversial ideas," and stick it to "the man" next: A class on World War II and Nazi Germany taught by a Holocaust denier? A course covering the Civil Rights movement taught by a Klansman?
 

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More moonbat science

Posted by Richard on July 10, 2006

Moonbat science marches on! Saturday, I posted about a couple of  "experiments" conducted by 9/11 conspiracy theorist Spooked to "prove" that airplanes didn’t bring down the WTC towers. The intrepid Instapinch, who brought those experiments to public attention, dove back into the depths of Spooked’s site and found yet another amazing experiment regarding the WTC towers. Plus an analysis of United Flight 93’s crash using pencil sketches to prove that:

None of it makes a lot of sense, but the clear thing is that THE OFFICIAL FLIGHT 93 CRASH STORY IS WRONG!

You can check out the WTC experiment at Instapinch. This experiment predates the more sophisticated — I’m not kidding — rabbit fence and concrete block model. Did I mention that this one involves coat hangers?

But don’t settle for Instapinch’s teaser about the Flight 93 theory, go read the whole thing — not for Spooked’s analysis, but for the many wonderful comments. Priceless! I laughed until tears ran down my cheeks. Here are a few samples:

Anonymous said…

…and despite his "genius" at fooling the world on 9/11, Bush still couldn’t figure out a way to fake WMD stockpiles in Iraq. Go figure.

Anonymous said…

This is satire, right. Please, let it be satire. Otherwise, you need some serious help and it scares me that you’re walking around unsupervised.

Anonymous said…

I saw Condi Rice in the pilot’s cabin on that flight. She deliberately flew the plane into the ground. At the last second she leaped out of the window with a parachute. The word "Haliburton" was stenciled on the ‘chute.

Anonymous said…

The "Condi Rice in a Haliburton parachute" theory has been completely discredited.

We now know that after shooting Lee Harvey Oswald, Jack Ruby was cryogenically frozen, cloned, and stored in Rumsefeld’s basement until being thawed out and used to fly the planes into the WTC, etc. If you want I can draw you a picture.

Johnny Drama said…

I’ve only one question.

Is this sort of stupidity the result of public school or lead-based paint chips?

Anonymous said…

Liberal…
its not what it used to be

John from WuzzaDem said…

Hopefully, My Last Analysis of the Flight 93 Crash

I think I speak for everyone when I say:

"Please please please please post just one more!"

(Note: The Instapinch post has some pretty good comments, too.)

The humor value of this stuff is undeniable. But, as Instapinch noted, there’s another reason to link to such material:

Without beating a dead horse here …, this sort of idiocy needs to see the light of day. It needs to see that light to show people how unhinged – how simply out of touch with the real world some of the lefty-whack jobs are. Reason and common sense are not given a back seat in these people’s worlds, they are strapped into an ejection seat and are *gone*. …

It’s not just Spooked and all the total whack jobs that he shares links and ideas with. A significant portion of the left, while not True Believers, are sympathetic to the conspiracy theorists and/or "agnostic" about who brought down the WTC towers. At the DailyKos comment that Instapinch linked, Socratic joined the laughter and took a bit of a swipe at DU. But Carolita immediately came to DU’s defense:

Don’t you think the 101 comments refuting this "experiment" constitute an adequate response? Unlike the right-wing blogs, DU doesn’t rewrite history and selectively remove a post from 2005 "just in case" some wingnut might see it. And it is hardly any surpise that instapinch.com would selectively point to a posted comment as if it were an official position of the web site and conveniently forget that a multitude of commentors wrote in to refute it.

Well, each of those three sentences is bogus. First, DU removes posts all the time (it’s not secretive; they’re marked "Message removed by moderator"), including several in the Spooked experiment thread. Second, the 101 comments at the time Carolita wrote (it’s now over 280) were absolutely not all refuting the experiment. I don’t think even half of them were negative (note: there were far fewer than a hundred commenters because there was much "dialog"). There certainly wasn’t a "multitude" refuting it. Some commenters were supportive of a 9/11 conspiracy; some were "open-minded"; some were skeptical of Spooked’s experiment, but in a friendly way. I remember at least one commenter praised Spooked for trying so hard and encouraged him to refine his experiment further — I pegged that one as a schoolteacher.

Only a couple or three commenters (before the recent flood of non-DU sightseers) completely rejected the notion of a 9/11 conspiracy and ridiculed Spooked’s experiment. And they had to fend off repeated attacks and challenges from an equal number of hard-core supporters.

Across a wide swath of the American Left extending deep into the Democratic base, the question of who’s responsible for the 9/11 attacks — al-Qaeda, the U.S. government, or Israel — is open to debate.

All this "moonbat science" is pretty damned funny. But it’s also sad. And a bit disturbing, when you think about it.

UPDATE: Moonbats rule in academia.
 

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Science from the reality-based community

Posted by Richard on July 9, 2006

I haven’t laughed so much in a long time. It all began Friday with LGF’s Hilarious Lefty Post of the Day, which linked to this post at Democratic Underground:

Can a jet fuel/hydrocarbon fire collapse a steel structure? An experiment.

The post is from last October (I’m not sure what prompted Charles to link to it now; maybe he just came across it). If you’d rather not visit DU, you can read the whole thing, plus some fine introductory and concluding remarks, at Instapinch.

The poster, spooked911, is apparently a regular at DU with over 1000 posts. His "experiment" (fully documented with a series of photographs) consisted of:

  • Making a "model" from rabbit fencing and concrete blocks.
  • Simulating "airplane damage" by cutting some of the "support columns" in the rabbit fencing with wire cutters.
  • Lighting kerosene-soaked newspapers inside this "steel structure" and letting it burn for 20 minutes.
  • Observing that the heat didn’t weaken the "steel structure" (rabbit-fencing) of his "building."

Ipso facto — proof that burning jet fuel couldn’t have caused the collapse of the WTC towers!

Here’s his "steel structure" during the "experiment":

Now, that’s pretty damned funny. But wait! It gets even better! The aforementioned Instapinch referenced an earlier post of his in which we learn that this Spooked fella has his own blog with yet more experiments (these are from April 2006):

His particular belief is that no aircraft hit the World Trade Center Towers because there was no aircraft wreckage *outside* the building…or the aircraft should have bounced off….or the aircraft should have passed all the way thru, unscathed. ..or whatever.

So, he devised an experiment to prove beyond the shadow of any doubt that there was no way possible, scientifically proven, mind you, that 767 aircraft flew into the WTC.

I can’t do it justice by explaining it here….go have a read (this one first and then this one) and see the light, brothers and sisters!

Well, I’ll give you a taste of the first one, Wings Break Off:

I set up an experiment testing how a plane might break up upon impacting arrayed steel columns like the WTC wall. The plane and the columns were both constructed of similar pieces of wood (which here favors the plane, since in real life, aluminum is weaker than steel). …

I pushed the plane forcefully into the "wall", and while the fuselage penetrated the wall after reasonably strong force was applied, the wings broke off at the root where the wings met the plane. … A few "columns" broke where the fuselage went in, and a couple broke on either side of the fuselage hole, where the wings broke off– but basically the array of columns were much stronger than the long wings.
…

This means of course, that no 767 hit either WTC tower.

That’s pretty damned funny, too. But you really need to check out Wings Break Off (and the follow-up, Stronger Wings) for the comments! They are priceless! Here’s one of my favorites:

Anonymous said…

If we assume 9/11 was a massive psy-ops campaign, then we can assume that nothing about 9/11 is really as it seems.

If we assume you are actually a 12 point buck, we can legally shoot you in the chest with a shotgun and mount your head on our living room wall.

What a moron.

Lots more along the same lines. Believe me, you’ll laugh your ass off.

UPDATE: As for the darker side of moonbattery — if you haven’t already read about Jeff Goldstein’s problem with the psychology prof (soon to be unemployed) who gradually went completely psycho online and threatened his kid, check out this post for starters. Assuming he’s back for good — the site’s been mostly down for a couple of days due to DoS attacks. Coincidence?
 
UPDATE 2: More moonbat science!

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Contemptible cartoon

Posted by Richard on June 23, 2006

Atlanta Journal-Constipation — sorry, Constitution — cartoonist Mike Luckovich came up with one of the most contemptible moral equivalence claims I’ve seen yet, and to drive his point home, he made the cartoon’s URL (the title) "pot-to-kettle.html":

Book on torture

By Mike Luckovich | Wednesday, June 21, 2006, 07:55 PM

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

 
I was going to compare and contrast, but I see that Sweetness & Light already did it, using some pictures that made the point without being too graphic. And don’t overlook Sweetness’ long list of "Related Articles."

I’ll just amplify a bit regarding the differences (but I’ll spare you the pictures):

  • American "torture": Humiliation and degradation. Sleep deprivation. Turning air conditioning way up. Playing Christina Aguillera music. Invasion of space by a female.
     
  • Al-Qaeda torture: Drilling holes in body with cordless drill. Gouging out eyes. Breaking and contorting limbs. Amputating limbs. Cutting off genitalia and stuffing in mouth. Eventually, using a dull blade, sawing off the head. Or cutting out the heart. 

Sweetness suggested (I think in jest), "Maybe Moslems have the right idea about how to handle cartoonists after all." Someone might want to point out to Mr. Luckovich that if America were really comparable to the Islamofascists, outraged good ole boys would be waving "Behead the Anti-American Cartoonist" signs outside the Journal-Constitution building, burning cars, threatening editors, and trying to shut the paper down.

Of course, right now I’m thinking that sounds like good, clean fun…
 

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Ho, hum — more airport security madness

Posted by Richard on June 14, 2006

We’ve all seen the absurd stories about TSA personnel confiscating nail clippers and knitting needles and pictures of guns, or had our own encounters with brain-dead airport security-bots, or had to resist making a smart-ass remark when asked the inane question, "Has anyone put anything into your luggage without your knowing it?"

Well, don’t think America’s Transportation Security Agency is unique. Apparently, there’s something about the very nature of airport security that compels bureaucracies devoted to it worldwide to hire morons and train them to enforce insane rules rigidly. This story fails to explicitly identify the airport, but: the only "Cape Town" I know of is in South Africa:

A girl of six triggered a security scare at an airport – with a pink Bugs Bunny water pistol rammed full of sweets.

Kelly Vinnicombe was bought the £2.50 toy in the departure lounge by her mother Sarah, and packed it in her bag.

But, as they went through the X-ray security machine, guards hauled them to one side.

Ms Vinnicombe, 34, was told the toy was technically a ‘weapon’ and would have to be registered at the firearms desk.

She spent an hour explaining where the gun came from – just metres away in an airport shop – before the toy was tagged and packed in a separate part of the plane.

Ms Vinnicombe, of Plymouth, Devon, said: ‘It’s bright pink with Bugs Bunny on it.’

The pair were reunited with their cargo at Heathrow Airport after an 11-hour flight.

A Cape Town airport spokeswoman insisted: ‘It’s is better to be safe than sorry.’

Yes, just imagine the recriminations if little Kelly had been allowed to board the plane with her Bugs Bunny water pistol and had subsequently hijacked it.

"Technically a ‘weapon’" — where do they find people like that?

Meanwhile, here in the U.S., some members of the Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS) have gone public with a problem they’ve been complaining about within the agency to no avail:

Several marshals say their bullets can penetrate most of the material in planes, leaving pilots and the plane’s hydraulics and flight-control system vulnerable if a weapon is discharged. Cockpit doors have been hardened with steel, but the walls on either side of the door have not.

Another marshal told the House committee agents should be issued ammunition loaded with frangible bullets, which break into smaller pieces on impact and thus have limited power to exit the target and continue.

"An aircraft is made up of composites, plastics, and aluminum. If a round were to penetrate through the front plastic/composite windshield of the aircraft, the results would be catastrophic at 500 miles per hour. We should be using frangible ammunition. It’s a no-brainer," the Nov. 27 memo said.

The FAMS issues SIG SAUER pistols in .357 SIG caliber, loaded with 125-grain Speer Gold Dot hollowpoints. 1350 feet per second. ‘Cause, well, when you’re forced to shoot someone inside an airliner, you’re going to be glad you have a very high-speed, flat-trajectory round that can take someone out at great distances, even through a car door or windshield. Right?

Hey, it’s what the Secret Service carries to protect the President. And some state highway patrol agencies have been very pleased with their performance. Guarding an airliner is just like protecting the President or patrolling many miles of highway, right?

I’m astonished that they’re not using a frangible or pre-fragmented round, such as the Glaser Safety Slug or the MagSafe.

Apparently, air marshals used to carry 9mm pistols loaded with frangibles, but former director Thomas Quinn switched them to the current choice. That’s the same Thomas Quinn who insisted that air marshals wear suits or sport coats and ties, thus ensuring that hijackers could spot them easily. After Quinn was replaced, along with his idiotic dress code, someone at DHS should have initiated a re-examination of every substantive decision that maroon made.
 

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Mourning al-Zarqawi

Posted by Richard on June 9, 2006

I can’t even begin to understand the wretched and debased moral sense of the late Nicholas Berg’s father, Michael (who has been an anti-war activist for 40 years, and is currently the Green Party candidate for Congress in Delaware). According to ABC News:

Michael Berg, whose son Nick the CIA believes was beheaded by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in 2004, told ABC News’ Aaron Katersky on Thursday that he abhors that the U.S. military has killed al-Zarqawi.

"I will not take joy in the death of a fellow human, even the human being who killed my son," said Berg, who blamed President Bush, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales — and not al-Zarqawi — for the death of his son because of what Berg said is their role in authorizing the torture of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.
…

Berg, who said he begged the United States government not to kill al-Zarqawi so that Berg could reconcile with him, worries that only more death will come out of his killing. 

In the AP story at Fox News, Berg described what he believes should have been done with al-Zarqawi — and why:

Berg said "restorative justice," — such as being forced to work in a hospital where maimed children are treated — could have made Zarqawi "a decent human being."

Simply breathtaking…

Mr. Berg, if any of those maimed children, or their nurses or doctors, were "Jewish pigs" — or any kind of infidel, including Shiite — al-Zarqawi would gleefully saw off their heads with the same combination of enthusiasm and lack of skill that he exhibited in the barbaric murders of Nick Berg and Eugene Armstrong. Your insane fantasy of "restorative justice" making him into a "decent human being" would simply enable him to keep killing — and recruiting and directing others to kill. In other words, Mr. Berg, more death comes out of letting people like al-Zarqawi live.

A lot of people view folks like Berg as idealists — misguided and unrealistic, but well-intentioned and somehow noble or admirable. That’s a load of crap. Check out the campaign website and articles linked above, or this interview in which he compares Bush unfavorably to Saddam Hussein — compare how Berg speaks of al-Zarqawi and the terrorists ("what we call the insurgency, and what I call the resistance") with how he speaks of Bush and Rumsfeld. Does Berg sound like he’s prepared to "reconcile" with Bush and Rumsfeld and forgive them their "sins"? Do you think Berg believes a little community service will make W. into a "decent human being"?

Michael Berg is forgiving, tolerant, and non-judgmental toward some of the most brutal and barbaric people on the planet, but he loathes those of us who argue that the values of the U.S. and Western Civilization are superior to the values of Islamofascism. I think it’s disgusting and contemptible.

There are plenty more like him on the moonbat left. On-line, you’ll find them at places like DailyKos and Democratic Underground (sorry, I can’t be bothered to provide links). They greeted the death of al-Zarqawi with the same mix of disappointment, anger, paranoid skepticism, and resentment that they displayed when Saddam was captured.

Berg and his allies exhibit a venomous hatred for Bush, Blair, capitalism — everything Western, really — but they display a studied "neutrality" toward those who want to destroy us. Sorry, that’s not pacifism or neutrality — that’s being on the other side.
 

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Ho hum, McNamara blames U.S.

Posted by Richard on May 6, 2005

Charles at LGF seems to be astonished by Robert McNamara’s new Foreign Policy article arguing that the only way to avoid nuclear catastrophe is for the US to disarm:

India and Pakistan have nuclear weapons. Russia still has thousands of them. North Korea probably has at least one or two. Iran is rushing to join the nuclear club, and recent discoveries in Arab countries like Libya and Egypt make it clear that the Arab Middle East wants in too.

But at Foreign Policy, Robert S. McNamara expresses the view of the inverted-reality-based community, saying it’s the United States that can’t be trusted, and the only way we can be safe is to begin disarming immediately: Apocalypse Soon. (Hat tip: hrw.)

Dutifully, I clicked through to the Foreign Policy article. I read the intro:

Robert McNamara is worried. He knows how close we’ve come. His counsel helped the Kennedy administration avert nuclear catastrophe during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Today, he believes the United States must no longer rely on nuclear weapons as a foreign-policy tool. To do so is immoral, illegal, and dreadfully dangerous.

The article itself began thusly:

It is time—well past time, in my view—for the United States to cease its Cold War-style reliance on nuclear weapons as a foreign-policy tool. At the risk of appearing simplistic and provocative, I would characterize current U.S. nuclear weapons policy as immoral, illegal, militarily unnecessary, and dreadfully dangerous. The risk of an accidental or inadvertent nuclear launch is unacceptably high. Far from reducing these risks, the Bush administration has signaled that it is committed to keeping the U.S. nuclear arsenal as a mainstay of its military power…

I noted that the article went on for five pages and decided it was surely not worth it. Returning to LGF, I saw that Charles was taken aback by McNamara’s line of thinking:

Is McNamara actually suggesting that if the US were only to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, we’d have nothing to fear from a nuclear Al Qaeda? That Osama bin Laden is a big fan of the Non-Proliferation Treaty? That Egypt and Syria would give up their nuclear aspirations if we played nice?

Well, sure. And to anyone familiar with McNamara, it should come as no surprise.

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