OK, I am taking the liberty of sharing a post my brother made on his blog, but apparently it made Hugh Hewitt and Mark Steyn laugh (I almost always try to listen when he appears on Thursday, but naturally I forgot all about it yesterday. I guess I'll have to get myself a podcast.) Biased as I may be, I do think that his image of Obama as buccaneer, at the link, turned out pretty well.
After maintaining his silence for two days, President Obama will soon make his first public statement about the pirate attack upon an U.S.-flagged vessel off the Horn of Africa. After several inquiries and a few well-placed bribes, Exurban League has received an early transcript of the President's remarks:
Good evening. As you know, early yesterday, Somali-based pirates attacked the Maersk Alabama, a freighter carrying relief supplies to Kenya. While we do not yet know all the details, the Alabama's crew re-took control of the vessel and forced the pirates off the ship.
Since the pirates are still holding the captain, I have sent FBI negotiators to facilitate his safe and speedy release. I assure his friends and family that I will not stop until this man-made disaster is resolved in a peaceful, tolerant and ecologically-sound manner.
Obviously, this incident has raised many concerns among Americans. There have been calls for justice and even violence against the misguided perpetrators. But such an emotional reaction has led to the disparagement of entire groups with which we are unfamiliar. We have seen this throughout history.
For too long, America has been too dismissive of the proud culture and invaluable contributions of the Pirate Community. Whether it is their pioneering work with prosthetics, husbandry of tropical birds or fanciful fashion sense, America owes a deep debt to Pirates.
The past eight years have shown a failure to appreciate the historic role of these noble seafarers. Instead of celebrating their entreprenuerial spirit and seeking to partner with them to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.
Some of us wonder if our current Overseas Contingency Operation would even be needed had the last administration not been so quick to label Pirates as "thieves," "terrorists" and worse. Such swashbucklaphobia can lead to tragic results, as we have seen this week.
To address this issue, I have instructed Vice President Joe Biden to create a cabinet-level Czar of Pirate Outreach and Buccaneer Interrelation. In addition, June 1-7 has been designated as Pirate Awareness Week, during which all federal buildings will fly the Jolly Roger and sponsor sensitivity training. Thankfully, my American Recovery and Reinvestment Act will fund free grog and hard tack for all attendees.
Finally, to all pirates listening to international broadcasts, shortwave services and ship-to-shore radio, let me say this:
Ahoy, me regret arr relationship has set sail in a scurvy manner. Arr people share many mutual 'alues and concerns on t' raging main. Perchance, could ye handsomely release the cap'n o' the ship and I assure that no harm will come t' ye or ye hearties. Let us smite t' reset button and launch our seabond on a new pegleg. Savvy? Godspeed t' ye and t' ye beauties. Aye, me parrot concurs.
Posted by: Barry Obama ||
04/10/2009 9:55 Comments ||
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#6
The White Huse needs to create an Inter-Pirate Out-reach program to show that we are not against all pirates, just the ones who take Americans hostage.
#12
I have a new line for Talk Like a Pirate Day:
"Thanks for the two mil, President Obama!"
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/10/2009 18:59 Comments ||
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Janet Napolitano:_"OK, you Rantburgers, they are not pirates! We consulted with experts and learned it's best not to offend them. Hence, from how on they will be referred to as: Would-be Wall Street Bankers who didn't get chance to go to Harvard or Wharton and chose a short-cut to wealth at the expense of shipping magnates".
Posted by: Jack Salami ||
04/10/2009 20:55 Comments ||
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#14
I nominate Ace for Pirate Czar.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
04/10/2009 21:04 Comments ||
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#15
Is he circumcised? He could be an Indian spy!
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/10/2009 21:09 Comments ||
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#16
He's not circumcised, dang!
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
04/10/2009 21:13 Comments ||
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#17
Ace might argue with that "dang," Deacon. ;-p
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
04/10/2009 21:16 Comments ||
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#18
Could be hiding out from the glue factory scouts.
#19
Ace is a proud Warhorse who will charge an Artillery battery, Infantry line, or Cavalry line. If I get killed, he starts eating. He ate my outline once during a long fight.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
04/10/2009 21:28 Comments ||
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Whahahahah... looks like a very good friend DB.
International efforts to thwart Somali piracy would appear to be floundering. Perhaps words from the 19th Century could offer a solution, writes the BBC News website's world affairs correspondent Paul Reynolds.
If the navies of the world need some advice on ways to stop piracy off Somalia, they could look to Lord Palmerston, British Foreign Secretary in 1841. "Taking a wasps' nest... is more effective than catching the wasps one by one," he remarked.
Palmerston, the great advocate of gunboat diplomacy, was speaking in support of a British naval officer, Joseph Denman. Denman had attacked and destroyed slave quarters on the West African coast and had been sued by the Spanish owners for damages.
It was British policy to try to destroy the slave trade, but this sometimes ran into legal complications. The British attorney general, in a gem of delicate legal advice, declared the following year that he ...
"cannot take it upon himself to advise... that the instructions to Her Majesty's naval officers are such as can with perfect legality be carried into execution...
"[He] is of the opinion that the blockading of rivers, landing and destroying buildings and carrying off of persons held in slavery... cannot be considered as sanctioned by the law of nations."
Denman, a hero of the anti-slave trade campaign, was eventually vindicated and the Royal Navy carried on with its anti-slavery operations.
James Walvin notes in his book Black Ivory: "Between 1820 and 1870 the Royal Navy seized almost 1,600 ships and freed 150,000 slaves."
With Somali piracy still threatening shipping, it sounds as if modern navies need a few Captain Joseph Denmans, or the like-minded American, Commodore Stephen Decatur. Sent to attack the Barbary pirates off North Africa in 1815, Decatur simply captured the flagship of the Algerian Bey [ruler] and forced a capitulation. When the Bey later tried to repudiate the agreement, the British and Dutch bombarded Algiers.
No such action against the "wasps' nests" along the Somali coast is possible today, even though the UN Security Council has authorised the use of the "necessary means" to stop pirates on the high seas and hot pursuit into Somali territorial waters.
However, the resolutions that made these actions permissible (1838 and 1846) also contain restrictions. Everything has to be done in accordance with "international law" and this is interpreted as complying with the conditions of the International Law of the Sea Convention.
This convention, in article 105, does permit the seizure of a pirate ship, but article 110 lays down that, in order to establish that a ship is indeed a pirate vessel, the warship - and it may only be a warship - has to send a boat to the suspected ship first and ask for its papers. This is hardly a recipe for a Denman - or Decatur-type action.
Add to this legal restriction the relative lack of warships in the seas off Somalia - more than there were, but still insufficient - and the reluctance to tackle the pirates in their home bases, throw in the chaos in Somalia, where there is no effective government, and you have perfect conditions for piracy.
Even if they are caught, they are simply handed over to Kenya whose legal system is not designed to deal with them. The German navy transported another batch of captured pirates to Kenya recently. But nobody knows how long they will be in custody there.
And the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia issued a damning report last December in which it castigated ship owners for paying ransom. "Exorbitant ransom payments have fuelled the growth of [pirate] groups," it stated.
The report also expressed concern about "the apparent complicity in pirate networks of Puntland administration officials at all levels."
Since writing in December last year about the legal problems involved, I have had a lot of e-mails from people angry at the ineffectiveness of the measures taken so far and proposing their own solutions.
These include:
* Convoys. Already done in the case of aid ships going into Kenyan and Somali ports
* Arming the crews. The crews might not want this, though in the latest case the American crew of cargo ship Maersk Alabama did fight back
* Arming merchant ships with heavy guns. Ship owners might not want to risk an engagement at sea
* luring pirates into attacking apparently unarmed ships which then declared themselves as warships. Would this be in "accordance with international law"?
* Other ideas suggested would appeal to officers Denman and Decatur
Posted by: john frum ||
04/10/2009 00:00 ||
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"luring pirates into attacking apparently unarmed ships which then declared themselves as warships. Would this be in "accordance with international law"?"
Who gives a rat's behind?
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
04/10/2009 0:18 Comments ||
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I'd suggest that you'd be surprised who gives a rat's ass, but you're a regular reader, so you won't be.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/10/2009 0:49 Comments ||
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"And the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia issued a damning report last December in which it castigated ship owners for paying ransom. 'Exorbitant ransom payments have fuelled the growth of [pirate] groups,' it stated."
Any payment should be regarded as collusion with the pirates. Ship owners should be made aware that funding pirate activity by paying ransoms is enabling pirates to attack other ships. It should be regarded as a very serious offence.
Now that some crews have begun fighting off the pirates (all credit to them), the pirates will start using lethal force more frequently - expect violence associated with hijackings to increase, until the problem is dealt with properly.
#4
Satellite imagery is available which can monitor each of these buggers and how many Lucky Strikes they smoked as they leave their huts and villages, walk to their mother boats, or RB's and put off to sea. The solution is painfully simple. The only components missing are a 5 inch deck gun and the willingness to use it.
#8
Gee, NS, we signed a good portion of the Geneva Convention and had the Senate even ratify it, but that didn't stop SCOTUS Kennedy of ignoring that part about illegal combatants and lack of coverage of rights. Doesn't matter what the paper says or not, the focus of power is not in the waters off of Somalia, its on the bench in Washington. Get to the heart of the matter first, then the pirate issue will quickly disappear.
I'll put this under "Arabia" since the author says it's (mostly) their fault.
AT the recent meeting of G-20 nations in London, officials from many nations agreed on one thing -- that the United States is to blame for the world recession. President Obama agreed, speaking in Strasbourg of "the reckless speculation of bankers that has now fueled a global economic downturn."
One problem with this blame-game is that last year's recession was much deeper in many European and Asian countries than it was in the United States.
By the fourth quarter of 2008, as the nearby table shows, real US gross domestic product was just 0.8 percent smaller than it had been a year earlier. The contraction was twice as deep in Germany and Britain and much worse in Japan and Sweden. In February, US industrial production was 11.8 percent lower than a year before -- while Singapore was down by 22.4 percent, Sweden by 22.9 percent and Japan by 38.4 percent.
What was the mechanism by which US problems were supposedly spread to other countries? It wasn't international trade. The dollar value of US imports didn't start to fall until August 2008, and imports of consumer goods didn't fall until September -- many months after Japan and Europe fell into recession.
Indeed, most of the economies that fell first and fastest were not heavily dependent on exports to the United States. Even Japan accounted for just 6.6 percent of US merchandise imports last year, compared with 15.9 percent for both Canada and China -- whose economies fared relatively well.
Even if all of the weakest European and Asian economies could plausibly blame all their troubles on the relatively stronger US economy, how could anyone possibly blame banks? There were no bank failures last year in Japan, Sweden, Canada or any other country on this list except Britain. And US and British banks didn't fail until September-October -- at least nine months after the Japanese and European recessions began
What did all the contracting economies have in common? Not all had housing booms -- certainly not Canada, Japan, Sweden or the other countries at the bottom of the economic-growth list.
What really triggered this recession should be obvious, since the same thing happened before every other postwar US recession save one (1960).
In 1983, economist James Hamilton of the University of California at San Diego showed that "all but one of the US recessions since World War Two have been preceded, typically with a lag of around three-fourths of a year, by a dramatic increase in the price of crude petroleum." The years 1946 to 2007 saw 10 dramatic spikes in the price of oil -- each of which was soon followed by recession.
In The Financial Times on Jan. 3, 2008, I therefore suggested, "The US economy is likely to slip into recession because of higher energy costs alone, regardless of what the Fed does."
In a new paper at cato.org, "Financial Crisis and Public Policy," Jagadeesh Gokhale notes that the prolonged decline in exurban housing construction that began in early 2006 was a logical response to rising prices of oil and gasoline at that time. So was the equally prolonged decline in sales of gas-guzzling vehicles. And the US/UK financial crises in the fall of 2008 were likewise as much a consequence of recession as the cause: Recessions turn good loans into bad.
The recession began in late 2007 or early 2008 in many countries, with the United States one of the least affected. Countries with the deepest recessions have no believable connection to US housing or banking problems.
The truth is much simpler: There is no way the oil-importing economies could have kept humming along with oil prices of $100 a barrel, much less $145. Like nearly every other recession of the postwar period, this one was triggered by a literally unbearable increase in the price of oil. Duh.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
04/10/2009 00:06 ||
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At least one part of the US economy is already getting healthier. February's trade deficit shrunk even as oil prices rose. US trade deficits:
Feb 2009: $26.0 billion
Jan 2009: $36.9 billion
Jan 2008: $58.2 billion Trade graph
Posted by: ed ||
04/10/2009 0:43 Comments ||
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#2
An anecdote for what it's worth - I have a friend who is a real estate agent, who told me that sales fell off a cliff in 2006 in her area, which is one of the highest income counties in the US (Loudoun VA).
#3
There are many guilty parties. One that gets the usual pass is the destructive nature of socialist laws and economies that drove so many investment dollars out of Europe and into America. It help create an environment that resulted in a 'single point of failure' situation. Notice how much of the AIG bailout went back to European banks. Why were they so heavily invested and exposed in the American market. One is that they can not get a reasonable return in their home environment and two that the US market had more of a guarantee [which the bailouts reaffirmed] than investments in China. Bad economics [investment downturns] at home drove the money towards other venues. Had more money stayed home, the resources to fuel property speculation in the US would have not been available at the level it was and the impact of one major point would have been distributed across a larger field of markets lessening the overall effect.
#4
Pretty basic. The cost of energy (oil & gas in this case) affects the cost of everything. When the consumer (all those blue collar workers everyone ignores but need to buy their products) have a relatively fixed income and their cost for energy goes up drastically something has to give. When the price of homes are tremendously over inflated for the market as well the bubble bursts even more dramatically.
This week I not only won a libel case in the High Court but a victory against religious fanaticism within Britain's Muslim community. Muslim Weekly, a conservative newspaper, had falsely accused me of belonging to a heterodox sect and therefore being a heretic. I was apparently less of a Muslim than the readers of that paper.
As the head of a progressive Muslim organisation in Britain that is dedicated to an enlightened, egalitarian and erudite Islam, I was victimised, like other forward-looking Muslims, by a campaign of classic McCarthyism. Just as Senator Joseph McCarthy ruined the lives of countless Americans during the 1950s when he and his committee smeared innocent people as communists, the Muslim hierarchy in Britain have used witchhunts to maintain their unquestioned theological power. Any Muslim freethinker is automatically branded as heretical or un-Islamic and excommunicated from the community - and debate is shut down.
I hope that my public vindication in the courts will embolden more progressives, dissenters and particularly thinking women to put their heads above the parapet and challenge the fundamentalist mullahs. Only then can we loosen the deadly grip of the self-appointed religious fraternity on what it is to be a Muslim in Britain.
Unfortunately, Islam in Britain has been taken over by the followers of a warped manifestation of the faith. The Muslim Council of Britain, the main Muslim newspapers and many of the big mosques are dominated by men who subscribe to a virulent and backward-looking brand of Islam that has been exported from the Middle East and the Indian sub-continent.
We need a reformation that saves Islam from foreign-inspired zealots. That reformation is already under way, with Muslims going back to the pristine teaching of the transcendent Koran, not taking on trust the hadith (a compilation of sayings of the Prophet Muhammad recorded some 250 years after his death by non-Arabs) or the corpus of medieval man-made Sharia (religious law). But because this reformation is still in its infancy, the reactionary clergy and its supporters is doing everything to strangle it.
Most if not all the thorny problems of faith that British Muslims face today - whether it is apostasy, blasphemy, jihad, women's oppression, homosexuality, religious intolerance or the democratic deficit in and outside the community - can be traced either to fabricated hadith or the masculine-biased Sharia.
Although the Koran repeatedly declares that God's revelation is conclusive and sufficient guidance for Muslims and that there is no need for any supplementary legal authority in Islam, the traditional Muslim clergy defies this explicit divine assurance. They falsely convince their flock that they cannot be true believers without the hadith. They falsely assert that this source of Islam is at the heart of being a real Muslim. Most Muslims have been told that the hadith are the sacred authentic words of the Prophet, but the plethora of fictitious and forged hadith proves otherwise.
Granted, there may be some useful guidance in the thousands upon thousands of hadith but they need to pass a rigorous double test. First, they cannot contradict the Koran and, second, they must not defy reason and logic. Unfortunately, most Muslims have been programmed to regard hadith as sacrosanct teachings that cannot be challenged. This holds all Muslims hostage to the antiquated prejudices or distortions of the narrators and recorders of the prophetic traditions.
The rampant oppression of women in Muslim society does not stem from the Koran but is chiefly the product of misogynistic hadith. For example, a famous authentic hadith declares that there will be a preponderance of women in Hell. But the facts here on earth suggest otherwise - male criminality far exceeds that of females.
These anti-Koranic perspectives will continue to predominate in the British Muslim community as it becomes more directly tied to ultra-conservative and extremist sects - such as the Wahhabi, Deobandi, Jamati Islami and the Tabligh Jamaat. These ideological radicals propagate a highly toxic caricature of Islam. They regard creed and culture as indistinguishable, refusing to grasp that Islam is a global religion, not a faith that is linked to one particular people or place.
Although Muslims have their own specific territorial cultural traditions, there is no such thing as an Islamic culture. Therefore the modern trend among British Muslims blindly to emulate Arab ethnic dress or grow beards or for women to wear the Wahhabi-sanctioned niqab or face masks has nothing to do with the Koran but everything to do with the primitive tribal mores and sexist practices of Arabia.
The relentless importation of Wahhabi-influenced theology and tradition into the body politic of the Muslim community is mainly the result of two factors. First, the Saudis control Mecca and Medina, the centres of Islam. This gives the Wahhabi Saudis both a spurious legitimacy and a captive market to peddle their sectarian poison.
Second, with their petrodollars the Saudis can afford to export the most horrendous brand of Islam around the globe. Here in Britain, conservative mosques and madrassas receive funding from the despotic Saudis and in turn extol their nefarious interpretation of Islam.
It is essential therefore that all thinking Muslims resist this foreign theological imposition and create a British Islam that is not only faithful to the original uplifting teachings of the faith but one that is natural to and at home in modern British society.
Dr Taj Hargey is the chair of the Muslim Educational Centre of Oxford and the Imam of the Summertown Islamic Congregation in Oxford
Wyatt Shev, The Examiner In 2003, radical historian Howard Zinn (not Thomas Jefferson) asserted that "Dissent is the highest form of patriotism." Apparently, that statement had an expiration date.
The Tea (Taxed Enough Already) Party-people consider themselves a coherent and diverse network of Americans from every conceivable walk of life....In reality, their 'movement' is incredibly divisive, a mindset that stands in sharp contrast to Obama's calls for bipartisanship in this time of great national need. Their arguments have the potential to divide the country along titanic lines not seen since the bloody days of the Civil War.
Think I'm exaggerating here? The Tea Party movement is an incredibly dangerous concept, fuelled by the usual gushes of sycophantic support from the conservative news media (here's looking at you, Fox).... If the country continues down this dark path, a second Civil War might not just be a cool idea for a sci-fi novel anymore. Can you imagine the potential for chaos if some of these 'protesters' decide to exercise the Second Amendment and bring their weapons to these rallies? There's a thin line between peaceful protest and bloodthirsty patriotic fervor, especially if those protesting are used to being on the side of the mighty status quo.
I hope April 15th comes and goes without major incident. And I hope the protesters fail in their mission to bring their message to a national audience. It's a message of fear, prejudice and, quite frankly, hate.
Posted by: Mike ||
04/10/2009 05:52 ||
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Please, oh merciful God, tell me that this is a parody...
#2
Rubbish of the first order. Bio of author Wyatt Shev.
Wyatt is an unabashed atheist who says he's doomed whether or not the world ends on December 21, 2012. But that doesn't stop him from taking a dark interest in all things apocalyptic. Join him as he explores the various signs that portend the End of Days
#6
a second Civil War might not just be a cool idea for a sci-fi novel anymore
A 'cool idea' huh? Tells a lot.
There's a thin line between peaceful protest and bloodthirsty patriotic fervor
Did he just say that not wanting to pay crushing taxes is patriotic?
It is my understanding that it is the leftists who show in dress, store urine bombs and buy out tasers, and leave a scene under a sheet of garbage are the one's who are out of control.
#7
Their arguments have the potential to divide the country along titanic lines not seen since the bloody days of the Civil War.
Yes, because THIS is the thing that will ignite the country. Not abortion, not evolution, not even Illegal Imigration. No, it's peaceful protests over TAXES that will doom us.
You can tell with Bush gone they are really reaching for the doom and gloom outside of the White House.
Posted by: Charles ||
04/10/2009 11:38 Comments ||
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Can you imagine the potential for chaos if some of these protesters decide to exercise the Second Amendment and bring their weapons to these rallies?
If nothing else these folks are transparent. Because of this guys vivid imagination of a potential for chaos he views constitutionally protected RIGHTS as a threat. Because after all the Second Amendment is synonymous with indiscriminate gun violence dontcha know.
#11
Revolution has to be just around the corneer...
Got a few years yet. IF the economy keeps sliding for years to the point where it puts a stop to the bailout and handout programs and causes massive job losses by not being able to retain all the people that are going to be hired for this stimulus programs, dumping them back into an economy with double digit jobless rates etc. Then maybe we're only a POTUS election or two away.
Posted by: Mike N. ||
04/10/2009 12:58 Comments ||
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#12
Hmm I need to proofread my own comments. That last one of mine looks like a stroke victim wrote it.
Meant to write about the rise in debt, which will have to be paid back.
#13
a second Civil War might not just be a cool idea for a sci-fi novel anymore
so who exactly is the armed american -- most likely a rebublican voter....sure would not want to be in a crowd of leftist -- communist - anarchist-- seditious - 5th element traitors when that shit hits the fan
Posted by: Dan ||
04/10/2009 15:48 Comments ||
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This looks to me as one of the first steps toward creating enough turmoil that His Royal Highness can be declared PREMIER (Or whatever word the public will swallow,) but means "Dictator"0 FOR OUR OWN GOOD. (Of course)
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
04/10/2009 15:51 Comments ||
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#15
It's been a long time since I read several of the Left Behind novels, but this guy could easily be the 'World Leader' instituting the universal currency and One World concept, who turns out to be ... well, sort of this AntiChrist-like figure, who - well, he gets killed and comes back to life.
I hope I don't get "Left Behind".
Posted by: Bobby ||
04/10/2009 18:09 Comments ||
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#16
This guy - meaning The Annointed One, not the author of the tripe above...
Posted by: Bobby ||
04/10/2009 18:10 Comments ||
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Rep. Spencer Bachus, the top Republican on the Financial Services Committee, told a hometown crowd in Alabama today he believes there are several socialists in the House. Actually, he says there are exactly 17 socialists in the House of Representatives. according to the Birmingham News.
But he said he is worried that he is being steered too far by the Congress: "Some of the men and women I work with in Congress are socialists."
Asked to clarify his comments after the breakfast speech at the Trussville Civic Center, Bachus said 17 members of the U.S. House are socialists.
Searching the POLITICO style book and the official U.S. House listings, we don't see a category for socialists -- just a lot of Ds and Rs next to lawmaker names. And Bachus didn't name names of the socialist 17. He's being kind, I figure he's off by a factor of 10
From Amit Kumar somewhere across the planet comes this somewhat puckish email: "Dear Sir, Would you kindly clarify as to which flavour of Taliban - the freedom fighters in Afghanistan or the Pakistani Taliban - was responsible for the blast at the Shia shrine in Chakwal? Since you always take pains to shed light on the delicate difference between the two, I thought you would be the best authority on this rather abstruse subject. It leaves everyone confused, including, I must add, the Taliban."
Touche. Whatever the holy fervour of the Taliban - for I guess those were the elements behind the Chakwal attack - what quarrel do they have with the Shia faithful of Chakwal? And how does killing and maiming the innocent advance any cause, just or unjust? These questions anyone will ask. And they will be wholly relevant. There is too much killing going on, killing that is random and mindless, almost as if killing was an end in itself.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: john frum ||
04/10/2009 00:00 ||
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Civilized is a much-misunderstood word, thanks to the rule of law crowd that is making our planet an increasingly dangerous place. Civilization is not an evolution of mankind but the imposition of human good on human evil. It is not a historical inevitability. It is a battle that has to be fought every day, because evil doesnt recede willingly before the wheels of progress.
There is nothing less civilized than rewarding evil and thus guaranteeing more of it. High-minded as it is commonly made to sound, it is not civilized to appease evil, to treat it with dignity and respect, to rationalize its root causes, to equivocate about whether evil really is evil, and, when all else fails, to ignore it to purge the very mention of its name in the vain hope that it will just go away. Evil doesnt do nuance. It finds you, it tests you, and you either fight it or youre part of the problem.
The men who founded our country and crafted our Constitution understood this. They understood that the rule of law was not a faux-civilized counterweight to the exhibition of might. Might, instead, is the firm underpinning of law and of our civilization. The Constitution explicitly recognized that the United States would have enemies; it provided Congress with the power to raise military forces that would fight them; it made the chief executive the commander-in-chief, concentrating in the presidency all the power the nation could muster to preserve itself by repelling evil. It did not regard evil as having a point of view, much less a right to counsel.
Thats not our position anymore. The scourge of piracy was virtually wiped out in 19th century because its practitioners were regarded as barbarians enemies of the human race (hostis humani generis, as Bret Stephens recently reminded us in a brilliant Wall Street Journal essay). They derived no comfort from the rule of law, for it was not a mark of civilization to give them comfort. The same is true of unlawful enemy combatants, terrorists who scoffed at the customs of civilized warfare. To regard them as mere criminals, to assume the duty of trying to understand why they would brutalize innocents, to arm them with rights against civilized society, was not civilized.
Posted by: Mike ||
04/10/2009 08:12 ||
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Except for one thing: The Americans on the Alabama, like the Americans on Flight 93, didnt wait for the international community to send the pirates a strong letter. They saw evil, they took it on, and as a result they took their ship and their lives back. The president may not think the United States is a particularly exceptional country, but you can bet Islamic radicals on land and sea noticed that dealing with a U.S. crew is an exceptional experience. There remains something in the American character that wont slide so easily into the straitjacket.
Posted by: Bobby ||
04/10/2009 18:15 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Rep. Spencer Bachus, the top Republican on the Financial Services Committee, told a hometown crowd in Alabama today he believes there are several socialists in the House. Actually, he says there are exactly 17 socialists in the House of Representatives. according to the Birmingham News.
