The Prophet of Neo-Federalism

2008-06-29T19:03:00.001-04:00

Because of this disturbing story, I am beginning a move to Wordpress.

This blog will remain, but will not be updated any further. http://neoprophet.wordpress.com will be your new destination.

An image manipulation exercise for shameless propaganda.

2008-06-06T23:49:00.002-04:00

What is fascism?

2008-05-17T01:23:00.002-04:00

Dictionary definitions of fascism

George Orwell once said the word fascism was being twisted to mean nothing more than "something undesirable." From the Italian fascio, meaning group or bundle, Mussolini's Fascism promised to unite Italy against petty internal partisan riots.

What fascism is, if it is appropriate to describe a certain general class of political movements as fascist, is united action for the sake of unity. Fundamentally, fascism is populist activism.

This call for unity claims to transcend politics, but in reality attempts to push a particular policy, and browbeats any who oppose it as "partisan", "divisive", and "obstructive". This obsession with unity ends up evading the means by which a policy is normally subject to debate and criticism.
To drive this united action almost always requires a threat - either an enemy or a crisis. This is necessary because people are naturally self-interested, and a collective threat, if real, is a perfectly justifiable reason for people to make an extra effort to work together. The difference between a fascist and the great leader is that the great leader is put there by circumstance and goes away when the job is done, while the fascist desires to be the great leader ahead of time, and may set in motion plans to create a suitable situation.
In modern leftism, I cannot help but taste the flavor of fascism when the supposed global warming crisis is used to justify legislation to place controls on various sectors of the economy, when various distinctly socialist causes like nationalized health care and mass public education are fraudulently cast as bipartisan goals, or when critics of these policies are aggressively marginalized in mainstream institutions.

What do Agent Smith, Naruto, and Barack H. Obama have in common?

2008-04-22T21:31:00.006-04:00

There are too freaking many of him.

From PA election return website at about 9:25pm.

And apparently even though John McCain technically has the nomination sewn up, about 30% of the state still wishes strongly that he had not.

I think that's something for Senator McCain to consider.

UPDATE 9:35

He hasn't held a press conference involving lots of groveling and apologies for his conduct as a Senator in the past 10 years, but John McCain has demonstrated his own mastery of the dreaded clone technique.

Another UPDATE 9:55
John McCain is strong, but Mike Huckabee is the true master.

The Fitna Saga Continues: LiveLeak Strikes Back

2008-03-31T16:26:00.003-04:00

Congratulations to LiveLeak. Their decision to pull Fitna turned out to be a temporary pragmatic move that was soon reversed after taking appropriate precautionary measures. At the time, accusations of cowardice were understandable and perhaps even appropriate, but it has turned out that LiveLeak was merely turning back, as it were, to make sure they had enough Twinkies and Red Bull, and not simply to hide and cower like so much of Britannia already has.

Their statement quoted here:

** 30/3/2008: Liveleak Update **

On the 28th of March LiveLeak.com was left with no other choice but to remove the film "fitna" from our servers following serious threats to our staff and their families. Since that time we have worked constantly on upgrading all security measures thus offering better protection for our staff and families. With these measures in place we have decided to once more make this video live on our site. We will not be pressured into censoring material which is legal and within our rules. We apologise for the removal and the delay in getting it back, but when you run a website you don't consider that some people would be insecure enough to threaten our lives simply because they do not like the content of a video we neither produced nor endorsed but merely hosted.

**Addendum 2008/4/9 **

The posted version of Fitna has been pulled from LiveLeak, now concerning copyright considerations regarding the display of Kurt Westergaard's Muhammad cartoon.

Fitna

2008-03-29T14:39:00.002-04:00

The film anticipated by some and dreaded by others, Fitna, has been out for a while, produced by the heroic Dutch politician Geert Wilders, of the Party for Freedom.

Get it here.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has come out against this film.

Apparently, juxtaposing video footage of Islamic violence with verses from the Qu'ran that endorse such violence, is somehow a kind of hate speech. Yes, it is hate speech, it is unacceptable provocation, to point out that these damnable people are simply those who take seriously the Qu'ran's calls to war against all infidels.

Ban Ki-Moon, you are an idiot. I don't care how many awards your essays won in school; you clearly have a very limited capacity for moral reasoning. By using your office to condemn this film, you are willfully harmonizing yourself with those who have made violent threats; these threats have caused so many websites already to withdraw their display of Fitna. The people making these threats have, from time to time, shown the will and the capability to carry them out. You are betraying the purpose of the United Nations by lending your authority, as imaginary as most of it is, to the demands of terrorists. I am sorry that it is necessary to say this.

Iran is not secretly plotting to destroy Israel.

2008-03-11T02:47:00.000-04:00

They're really quite transparent and public about it. (LGF)

To the Republican Party and Senator McCain.

2008-02-07T22:33:00.000-05:00

I don't know if you are quite entirely aware of what you are going to do to your Party in the long run.

John McCain has a lot to answer for in his recent Senate record. We the voters require a monumental gesture demonstrating a willingness to listen to the party base. He would go a long way to secure the votes of the people who do not trust him, by choosing a running mate with a solid conservative record, especially in domestic matters.

Slim, efficient government and low taxes.
Independence for Individuals.
Stop regulating so much.

I recommend Governor Sarah Palin.
For one thing, Democrat-affiliated blogs seem to be terrified of her when her name is mentioned. I believe this would be a good thing for us.

Any campaign people reading this, know that unless John McCain does this, or something similar, he gets nothing from me. There are a lot of reasons people don't trust him. We all rightfully expect to be given better reasons to vote for him, and the sooner he brings that to the table, the sooner he can get some more expansive support. Until then, may God have mercy on America.

Goodbye, Fred.

2008-01-22T18:51:00.000-05:00

Well, Fred Thompson just dropped out of the race. That leaves very few remarkable candidates. And he was doing better than Giuliani.

Quitter.

Well, to be fair, the media had a hand in this. You, the enlightened journalists, decided to pretend the man didn't exist, and you shall be held accountable for your part in this.

As a cartoonist I have a deep respect for the 1st and 2nd Amendments. The first guaranteeing my right to draw cartoons, the second guaranteeing my right to protect myself from anyone who might want to kill me over my cartoons.

And with regards to those who might want to kill me over a cartoon, I'm sorry, but a bit of mayhem overseas is going to be necessary to make that stop. So that leaves out Uncle Ron as well, not like he's likely to win anything anyway.

Therefore, I cannot endorse any of the current front-running candidates for the office of President of the United States. My vote will now be reduced to who I calculate to cause the least damage, to whoever can beat the worst candidate in an election.

I cannot endorse anyone because this is what I expect:

1. Kill the terrorists. If you have to invade Iran, do it. If you have to invade Mecca, do it. If you want to choke their supply of money, find a way to end the world's dependence on petroleum. If you can't do that, dust off the old nuclear warhead activation codes.
2. Let Americans protect themselves from domestic threats. Terrorism is fundamentally a decentralized menace. A decentralized defense is the proper opposition to such a thing. You won't be able to win by simply running more background checks on customers at Chemical Supply Warehouse Emporium.
3. Cut taxes already.

I want these three things, and I want to vote for a president who will deliver. Until then, suck it.

10/9 Debate Followup

2007-10-11T18:58:00.000-04:00

Factcheck.org: Fred Thompson better at stating facts than Rudolph Giuliani

This is important enough to dock Giuliani a few more points in my highly unscientific subjective debate scoring.

However, it's important to point out that Giuliani's supposedly inaccurate statements regarding Hillary Clinton's policies may not be as inaccurate as they seem to be if you go on just what Mrs. Clinton said.

If you entertain for a moment the notion that Hillary Clinton is actually a power-hungry witch who can play public opinion like a digereedo, you might be tempted to look beyond her statements as you try to decipher her intentions.

While this is probably true, Rudy Giuliani still demonstrated a greater looseness with the facts than some other candidates. But I don't think that will hurt him necessarily. He has a good conciseness to his statements that makes him stand out in debate, and having a few factual errors is the sort of thing that many people will end up overlooking. I would suggest though that the person we want as our head of state be someone whose statements can stand up to scrutiny.

The October 9 Republican Debates

2007-10-09T18:26:00.000-04:00

Top performers: Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, Mitt Romney, and Tom Tancredo.

Who didn't go over time limits too much: Giuliani, Thompson. While I am not a strong believer in the idea that a candidate be heavily judged on his ability to articulate policy in 30 second sound bites, it is a plus to be able to demonstrate that you actually paid attention to the rules.

Mitt Romney, for the most part very strong, but also seems rather rehearsed, and the seductive movements of his eyebrows didn't help that perception. For him the timer was something that just applied to other people. I'm sorry, but in the context of the debates, I want to hear what your policy is and why I should believe it will work. Don't break into anecdotes for 5 minutes.

Fred Thompson was a bit underwhelming, unfortunately, and didn't talk enough about the implementation of his policies.

Giuliani was articulate, and very effective with the optimism angle. Certain policies on which he has a historical habit of weakness were not addressed very well by the questions. Although even if I were asking the questions I'm sure he'd still make at least second place.

Tom Tancredo did his part in keeping immigration in the forefront of people's heads. In that respect he himself is something of a one-issue guy.

Ron Paul, was just embarrassing whenever he opened his mouth on foreign policy.

The questions themselves were unimpressive.

Who won the debate?
I would say the best performer was Giuliani, but in terms of who beat Chris Matthews the best, it was Thompson.

Some of the questions that I would ask:

Considering the problem with criminal aliens, it seems fair to say that the government of Mexico is being criminally negligent with regards to the lower classes of its people. To what extent would you go to encourage Mexico to take responsibility for its own people?

Assuming that all small arms are legalized, what sort of regulations would you suggest to keep crew-served weapons and artillery only in the hands of responsible citizens?

Do you think setting a Constitutional maximum on the tax rate is necessary?

There's this Bill of Rights thing in the Constitution. If an elected official uses his or her official powers to violate any of these enumerated rights, should it be prosecuted as treason punishable by death?

Now this is my perspective on what needs to be done. Who should be in charge is whoever can agree the most with this: implementing public policy or avoiding interference where appropriate.

The Global Crusade on Islamic Imperialism
For starters, the War on Terror needs a more descriptive title. Our terrorist enemy is at this time Islamic in nature. While certainly not representative of all Muslims, the ideology is nonetheless globally pervasive, with the Wahhabi doctrines that are promoted by the Saudi government and accepted by a majority of Muslim clergy. And that I think is the warning sign that the theology of Islam itself is the problem. That the majority of Muslims are decent peaceful people just goes to show that most people are not theologians. But there are in fact severe problems that arise from an orthodox interpretation of the Quran and Hadiths, which include calls to warfare of every type against all infidels until they are subdued and dominated by Islamic government. And that's just Jews and Christians. Atheists and pagans get completely hosed in the deal, in that they don't even get the option of living.
With regards to any religion, you can't simply ignore its established canon of authoritative holy scripture and then expect to be able to claim that you are practicing the truest version of that religion. And so far there isn't much in the way of textual evidence from the Quran or those Hadiths that are considered reliable that the practices of the terrorists and of Islamic governments are something other than devout Islamic orthodoxy.
That doesn't mean we need to be raiding every mosque in the country. While such a thing might be beneficial it would not do well in the long term to establish such a drastic precedent. A more effective opposition would be one with a similar type of organization as the jihadists, but based on a more benevolent ideology, with its various branches coming out of any compatible religion. Criticism of Islam in Art and Logic (two of three universal languages) should be heavily advanced, while the use of Violence (the third universal language) must be strictly defensive. With regards to that last bit, I am thinking that it would be a particularly good idea for this hypothetical Network to focus on providing trained and armed bodyguards to authors, speakers, filmmakers, cartoonists, and others who nonviolently criticize Islam. A vital step in this battle is crushing the myth that criticizing a religion is inherently an act of paranoid bigotry.
From there, we can track those who make credible threats and drop a train on them and all their friends, and then spread the protection effort to the rest of the world's Islam critics, and see how things go from there when people feel like they can talk without being killed.

Other Things that Relate to Terrorism
Immigration: America is a big party, but it's BYOB, and we need our bouncers to enforce this rule. It's not just Mexicans that are trying to sneak in. There are jihadist terrorists coming in too, some of whom are remarkably good at playing Mexican. Therefore we need to be a little more serious about catching and deporting those who sneak in. Those who get in line and do the paperwork should of course be welcomed with open arms. That's why this is not anti-immigration. To characterize it as such is deceptive and malicious.

Guns: The real issue is self-defense. People should be allowed to do it, especially with a gun, if they're about to be attacked by terrorists.

Note that on these two secondary points I question Rudy's seriousness, and suggest that he would make a better Attorney General or Vice President than President.

So that you may know that my wisdom is legitimate.

2007-10-03T02:58:00.001-04:00

Am-I-Dumb.com - Intelligence Test

Never Forget

2007-09-11T10:08:00.000-04:00

19 young men of diverse backgrounds from broad strata of society hijacked four airplanes and crashed three of them into American buildings, killing three thousand people, utterly destroying three World Trade Center buildings (the twin towers and WTC7).

What motivated these men remains an utter mystery, because to suggest that there was some kind of religious connection would threaten to start a religious war, and we can't have any of that can we?

Yeeeargh!

2007-09-03T04:44:00.000-04:00

Howard Dean met with the Islamic Society of North America (unsurprisingly, among the unindicted co-conspirators mentioned in the Holy Land Foundation terror case).

His bright idea: Tell attendees of an event sponsored by a front organization of radical Muslim imperialists to run for office.

Shameless Islamophobia

2007-09-01T22:39:00.000-04:00

Congratulations, Venezuela.

2007-08-17T16:56:00.000-04:00

I'd like to extend some recognition to Ex-President Jimmy Carter, author of Protocols of the Elders of Zion II: Palestine, Peace not Apartheid for certifying the election of 21st century socialist jackass Hugo Chavez, who is now on his way to being Eternal President of Venezuela.
I hope you're proud of yourselves people.

You whined for 7 years about the evil triumvirate of Bush, Cheney and Rove who will almost certainly, any day now, declare martial law, suspend elections, and round up all the poor widdle Democrats to cart them off to the camps to be gassed--except of course for the few valiant members of the Democratic Underground who have an AR-15 stashed in the back of the closet, intended for the sole purpose of shooting the evil Republicans in the kneecaps. How you're going to manage to do that when you're so afraid of the thing you won't even practice with it or consider it to defend your home from the more mundane breeds of hooligans and scoundrels is beyond me.

Only goes to show you wouldn't know a real dictator from a well-meaning bumpkin if they looked you in the face and gave you a hug. Clearly Sean Penn hasn't anyway.

As for President Chavez, he can't ride the wave forever. He's going to find out sooner or later that 'life' is a negotiable length of time for him to be president.

I pose to you a riddle:

2007-08-02T00:04:00.000-04:00

In the year 2007, Doug "Ibrahim" Hooper, head of national Islamist lobbying organization CAIR, an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas funding case, somehow manages to flagrantly and falsely attribute some slightly extreme statements to Robert Spencer of JihadWatch. Incidentally, in an argument with Christopher Hitchens and Dennis Prager on Paula Zahn, which in its context was something of a non sequitur.

Robert Spencer maintains that these statements appeared in JihadWatch's comments, and JihadWatch has a distinctively long disclaimer that should make it clear even to the most daft of nincompoops that its comments sections are not endorsed by JihadWatch. If that is to be believed, then Hooper is clearly either:
1) An inexcusable moron who, in the year 2007, is somehow clinically incapable of understanding the basic concept of blog comments.
2) A poor liar. When Muhammad (police be upon him) told his followers "You may lie" in order to achieve the assassinations of prominent infidels, he probably would have said to Dougie, "I wasn't talking to you. You couldn't lie your way out of a wet paper bag. Go and wash the camels."

Islam: What the West Needs to Know

2007-07-30T20:40:00.000-04:00

Just got the DVD today, and it's a very smartly executed documentary.

The absence of music was a smart move. For such a criticism of Islam you don't need to draw accusations of trying to put an emotional spin on the material by adding a soundtrack.

The million dollar question: What are we supposed to do about it? I think it's important to consider this from a multitude of perspectives.

From a secular perspective, it's no contest, the obvious answer is to recognize that orthodox Islam has declared war on the rest of the world, and begin seriously to fight back.

From a religious perspective, many Christians have probably considered how Islam might fit into the final sequence of events described in the Revelation. It is therefore tempting to adopt a nihilistic theology assuming that since Islam is apparently the instrument of Satan's final move against humanity, we can't do anything about it except wait for God to personally come and make everything better, so we might as well sit tight and not worry too much if most of us end up becoming martyrs (Christian martyrs being of course, notoriously nonviolent), because it's all going to end with the saints going to 1000 years of blissful jury duty. I would ask if this is really what God intends, if one takes the entire history of the world from beginning to end into perspective.
The message that I think the entire story of humanity, in the Bible and beyond, is about -- is that of the power of liberty. A certain amount of law is required to sustain liberty, those which protect the individual and his self-determination -- but that is an enormous difference from trying to regulate people into behaving correctly all the time. People have tried to understand this throughout history, and often have failed. You can't make people better with laws, not by adding more laws, nor by more draconian enforcement. And I don't think the divine ideal of perfect behavior involves adhering to a long list of rules as such. Righteousness cannot exist without freedom, because the most righteous of deeds is the act of creation, just as the most descriptive word to use regarding God is "Creator". To build, invent, and educate are among the greatest things a person can aspire to do, and to become obsessed with more than a few laws threatens to destroy that urge. Compare that to the message of Islam, where jihad in the way of Allah and obedience to an exhaustive list of rules in the Shari'a is the most glorified. Indeed, we might even be approaching perfect opposition.

I think there will be a time and a place to exercise that opposition, and I think only by seriously endangering the human forces of evil in the world will the rest of Satan's forces be compelled to make their final move, because that will be the only thing they can do then. Only then will it prove too much for us to handle, I think, and time to start seriously examining that last book in the Bible. I think it will work out this way, because I believe humanity has a part to play in terms of the grand scheme of things and the causal chain of events that will eventually lead to the conclusion of this era, and are not just along for the ride in a predetermined schedule.

Jihad: The Musical!

2007-07-30T20:33:00.001-04:00

2007-07-29T23:15:00.000-04:00

My Conservative Identity:

You are a Freedom Crusader, also known as a neoconservative. You believe in taking the fight directly to the enemy, whether it’s terrorists abroad or the liberal terrorist appeasers at home who give them aid and comfort.

Take the quiz at www.FightLiberals.com

Interesting. Of course, if one comprehends the symbolism in my banner up there it's not entirely surprising.

Disproportionate response.

2007-07-29T21:27:00.000-04:00

Guy drops Koran in toilet. Koran is university property.
In theory, the worst this can be considered is some kind of misdemeanor. That is, if we're operating on American values here.
No. Because it is a Koran, certain people become enormously offended and demand that hate crime charges be pursued, which means Stanislav Shmulevich is now being charged with two felonies.
(hat tip: LGF)

Come on, this is disappointing.

2007-07-26T14:58:00.000-04:00

From LGF:
Fred Thompson hires Spencer Abraham as campaign manager.

Mr. Abraham is an open-borders moron, who St. Dubya selected as his token American of Middle Eastern ancestry in his cabinet in 2000. As Energy Secretary, he happily continued UN sponsored programs that allowed foreign visitors to tour US nuclear facilities.

Happy 4th

2007-07-04T13:15:00.001-04:00

If you can't root for your own team, get out of the stadium.
Happy Independence Day.

For peeks at the progress of Project Anduril, check out the artblog.

Fred! And secret project.

2007-06-06T23:43:00.000-04:00

The Prophet recommends Fred Thompson as the best candidate for US President for the election in 2008.
But all you get is a yellow hyperlink, not a fancy widget. The fancy widget cramps my style. Literally. It turned all the text black, which on a black background is unequivocally inferior to silver.

Also, I am announcing Project Anduril, which will eventually result in a video series with an indefinite number of episodes. It will be something akin to an animated talk show, so while some parts could be written ahead of time, I would like to make as much of it as timely as is practical.

BWAHAHA! Sorry, Dubya.

2007-05-30T21:19:00.000-04:00

From Pat Dollard, a box of awesome.

I understand entirely why civilians have to wait to find out about this stuff, though it is kind of distressing to have to start mistrusting people because of the apparent evidence.

Even so, Dubya: If you don't take the fact seriously that the entire criminal population of Mexico, plus an unknown number of Other-Than-Mexican (read Jihadistani) undocumented immigrants are walking over our southern doorstep, you might as well have bent over for Iran, because it won't make any difference in the long run.

But for now, let's see how this next bit goes.

Memorial Day 2007

2007-05-28T16:30:00.000-04:00

For all the soldiers lost at various times in US history.

For chatting up the Iranians, the contributors to many of our most recent Iraq losses, may God have mercy on you, Mr. Bush.

The icy grip of global warming

2007-04-08T13:35:00.000-04:00

Here you see yesterday's edition of my local paper juxtaposed with my back porch.

Yeah.

Look, the Earth's general climate may be on a trend towards getting a couple degrees warmer. That's fine.

Do we need to do something about it? I would strongly recommend not attempting to take any "preventative measures". The reasons being:
1. I do not believe it is a problem. Carbon dioxide is a part of life. We exhale it, plants soak it up. CO2 is good for all those trees and vegetables these hippies claim to love so much. Higher average global temperatures will allow higher latitudes to enjoy longer growing seasons, enabling us to sustain a higher global population, which means this is good for people, generally speaking. The doomsayers even admit that we will go into a phase of apparent prosperity before some mumbo jumbo happens and the world goes into widespread famine. The real question ought to be, though, what evidence there really is that the coming warming period will be different from the Medieval Warming Period, which was by all accounts a relatively great time for the human race. And is it not somewhat arrogant to assume that, in our relatively short history of accurately measuring temperatures, we can say that a particular trend is unnaturally caused.
2. Even supposing that it is a problem, the solution would not be to tax the crap out of CO2 emissions and sign onto Kyoto. We use fossil fuels at the moment because they are the most economically efficient. The pieces that need to be brought together for major technological advancements will do so the most quickly on our fossil fuel infrastructure. Thus, if you want us to get to that mythical future of fusion powered flying cars, robot butlers in every house, and minimal carbon emissions, the best thing to do would be something other than sabotaging the economy. Yes, sometimes the status quo is crappy and needs to be changed, but do it by finding and offering something better, not by crashing the current system and just hoping we'll work things out. And by better, I mean economically better; more affordable and/or more efficient.

Congratulations Tony Blair, you fail at civilization.

2007-04-06T23:06:00.000-04:00

Thanks to Britain's painfully limp-wristed handling of the situation, this is basically what went down.

Iran's scored a big PR coup and now the EUnuchs are going to be prancing around arms flapping with delight that Mahmoud "Death to the Jews" Ahmadinejad isn't such a bad guy after all.

See, he let the 15 sailors go out of the goodness of his heart.

Right, sure. What he got was the UK to display the uttermost extent of its resolve. Guess which one it was (apologies for attempting to write in English English):
A) "It would be awfully nice of you to let our boys go now, old chap. I can't help but notice your oil refinery sitting out there, and it would be a tremendous shame if it went missing or some such, wuddenit?"
B) "Drop a train on 'em, Nigel."
C) "Would you please, please, please, pretty please with cream and sugar, let our sailors come home and in exchange we promise never to violate your sovereignty again, and if there's anything we need to do to prove our eternal allegiance to you, just drop me a line." (SFX: Zip--flomp.)

Goodbye, Germany.

2007-03-22T19:11:00.000-04:00

Female German judge rules that the most holy sacred book the Qu'ran permits spousal abuse.

If we used the Qu'ran as our law, we would all be sexually paranoid men or compulsively forgiving battered wives.

Public School gone insane in Ridgefield, CT

2007-03-04T22:58:00.000-05:00

Once again, school administrators get the idea to stick their noses in areas they don't belong.
hat tip: LGF

Sure, there is nothing really wrong with seeing what information about a particular person is on the Internet -- however, just as you must be careful what you say on the Internet, you must also be careful not to read too much into material that doesn't really have anything to do with your own relationship to the person.

Knowing stuff about a person is fine. Trying to wage a personal jihad against every unpleasant aspect of every person you have a professional relationship with is stupid.
High school students are old enough to start forming some of their own opinions about the world. Education isn't about managing people's opinions. It's about giving people information in order to allow them to build their own opinions.

Dean Esmay fails at line drawing.

2007-03-01T06:02:00.000-05:00

You must accept these things to remain in Dean's good graces.
Dean, who fancies himself to be a new William F. Buckley, demands that we pretend Islam has nothing to do with the terrorism problem.

1) Islam does not represent the forces of Satan or the Anti-Christ bent on destruction of the Christian world.

This is reasonable for the most part. Islam, generally speaking, is bent on destruction of the Christian world. And by that, they mean the mostly secularized West. 75% of Muslims may rather not do so, but Muhammad, the Qu'ran, and many imams say this must be done. And because this is based in the most orthodox forms of Islam, it is fair to say that Islam is bent on destruction of the non-Muslim world. However, that is not reason to assume the worst and go all eschatological, branding Islam as the force of Satan, or the Antichrist. That suggestion is to me an evidence of nihilistic theology. Some people would like nothing more than to think Islam is the Beast of Revelation, and use that as an excuse to give up, because after all Jesus is going to come and nuke 'em all in the lake of fire. Well, what if that isn't the case? What if this is just a human problem that we're going to have to deal with ourselves?

2) There is no 1,400 year old "war with the West/Christianity" being waged by Muslims or anyone else.

This is entirely false. Muhammad himself started this war, and his spiritual descendants have continued it. It is a historical fact in which denial is pure lunacy. Read the history of Islam, Dean.

3) Islam as a religion is no more inherently incompatible with modernity, minority rights, women's rights, or democratic pluralism than most religions.

Also entirely false. Esmay thinks he is being reasonable with the word inherently, as if the jihadists can simply be excommunicated and then Islam will be just as decent as any other religion. To make Islam a decent religion would require denouncing Muhammad and at least half the Quran, especially the latter half. In other words there wouldn't be very much left to hold the religion together, and what they'd have left would be essentially a form of Judaism. A religion's integrity depends very much on its scripture and prophets. You can't simply take a holy book, and throw bits out because this part or that is unscientific, uncool, or just plain evil--and expect the religion to remain otherwise intact.

4) Medieval, anachronistic, obscure terms like "dhimmitude" or "taqiyya" are suitable for polite intellectual discussion. They are not and never will be appropriate to slap in the face of everyday Muslims or their friends.

Oh please. So it's all right to use the words politely in intellectual discussion, but not to slap people in the face. Who decides which is which? What if I intend to use it politely and the other party interprets it as a slap in the face? I imagine that if I am arguing with a CAIR person, that sort of thing will always be interpreted as a slap in the face no matter how I mean it. So who decides when it's appropriate? The Archbishop Dean Esmay, I guess.

5) Muslims have no more need to prove that they can be good Americans, loyal citizens, decent people, or enemies of terrorism than anyone else does.

This is true to an extent, as long as they behave like decent people and enemies of terrorism they should not be subject to suspicion. A free society ought to treat its people as innocent until proven guilty.
However, covering for those who act suspiciously, such as CAIR on behalf of the 'flying imams' who seemed to be attempting a dry run of a hijacking, is itself suspicious behavior. Those who defend suspicious organizations like CAIR must get a clue or be considered also suspicious. People have a right to be suspicious if the facts indicate there might be a basis for suspicion.

Face it, Dean. Islam has a problem, which has a certain direct correlation to terrorism. There might be parts of Islamic culture worth salvaging. But you won't succeed in saving Islam by pretending the religion itself doesn't have a problem.

Intelligent Design, Evolution, Creationism, and the Great Bungles of the ACLU

2007-02-23T15:33:00.000-05:00

This issue has a problem. Namely, the problem that there is simultaneously "virtually unanimous consensus among all real scientists" that the earth is 4.5 billion years old, we are descended from animals that were essentially apes, and going back even further--bacteria, et blah; and "a great deal of practically conclusive evidence that God created the Earth 6,000 years ago", depending on who you ask.

Prior posts on this topic: A scientific solution to this controversy

And before I go on to the problem I'd better put down the standard preface.

Dictionary definition of evolution: change in the gene pool of a population from generation to generation by such processes as mutation, natural selection, and genetic drift.

As that is defined, yes it happens. It's been proven. What is not going to be tolerated is the pulling of a switcheroo, discussing evidence that evolution happens as defined by the dictionary definition, and then suddenly leaping to the idea that this proves we all evolved from bacteria.

The history of the ancient world as it pertains to biology, according to the creationist perspective:
c. 4000 BC: The earth is created over the course of six days. All created life is at this point genetically perfect.
c. 2500 BC: The Flood happens. A pair of every animal, seven of 'clean'(edible) animals (the text is unclear whether it means seven animals or seven pairs) is taken into the Ark. This is not a sampling of every species as modern taxonomists define it. The 'kinds' of animals is most likely somewhere around the level of genus or family, and yes, there was plenty of room on the Ark for the number of animals required at this level (around 15 to 20 thousand), and the food required to feed them while they were on board.
This is a major genetic bottleneck. All the mutations that occurred up to this point remained mostly hidden, as the deteriorated versions of genes would be recessive to the dominant perfect versions of genes, and the population had grown large enough to keep everything mixed up. After the bottleneck, of course, the accumulated mutations would be expressed relatively suddenly as the animals were forced to inbreed. Even then, their genomes were solid enough to withstand the amount of inbreeding that happened before there were large enough populations to stabilize the gene pool, but the result of the bottleneck was the differentiation of species as we recognize them today. As the various animal populations spread out, some species, and occasionally whole kinds of animals, became concentrated in certain geographic regions, and the geologic aftereffects of the Flood may have included an accelerated rate of continental drift, so that explains Australia.
c. 2300 BC: The Tower of Babel (Babylon) is erected and God scatters its builders across the world. The Tower was pyramidal in shape, and the diaspora Babylonians plant the seeds of all the pyramid-building civilizations across the world. The older apparent ages of various ancient civilizations is caused by a combination of inflated history on the part of the ancients (trying to add legitimacy to their own culture by saying it is older, appealing to the ancient principle of 'I was here first') and coming up with stories of its past, and error on the part of modern archaeologists. The most accurate way to measure the age of a civilization would be to look at the records of its neighbors. This does in fact bring the time frame down to within the range expected by creationists.
After 2300 BC. History as commonly accepted.

That this is implausible according to naturalists is not the point; this description is mainly to point out the extent to which biological evolution is accepted by creationists, so that time is not wasted arguing over points that are not disputed.

Specifically, the problem is the role of the ACLU in establishing evolutionism in the public education system. It did not really use science to achieve its goal, but the Constitutional requirement that the government not teach religious doctrine. That's really quite fair, except for the part that government schools now have the implicit authority to dictate what is and is not a religious belief, which means the schools get away with implicitly condemning any religious belief that conflicts with a nonreligious belief without having to actually back up their position. I don't mean just evolution here, but the PC crap as well.

The problem is also the evangelical Christians who think the solution is to scientifically prove creationism until it can be forced into the public schools. That is unlikely to happen. They have made some interesting discoveries in such areas as the RATE project, but anyone with a healthy level of skepticism isn't going to change sides just because the other guys also have evidence.

The real question ought to be what business the government has in running our schools in the first place, if they indeed are legally crippled from delivering a proper education.

Now, implicit in this suggestion is that parents be allowed to indoctrinate their own children, which will send people like Richard bloody "Teaching kids creationism is child abuse" Dawkins up in arms. Tough. Children have to be raised to be wary of the government in order to ensure that government be kept in check, in order to prevent totalitarian regimes from arising. In order to achieve that, children cannot be raised by the government, and government cannot have a say to any significant extent in how a child is raised, beyond the scope of general crime prevention. That means kids are going to be taught weird things that not all of us will agree with, which will either be crushed by the real world or (gasp) defended successfully, or some combination of the two which can be difficult to figure out.

Competition has a certain place in science, which is sometimes obstructed when the academic mob develops a strong adherence to one position. When that happens the only way to preserve competition is to build a parallel system of education, research, and funding. It won't be until the competitive nature of this issue is embraced by both sides, when they start setting common goals and see who can get to them first, that real scientific progress will occur. It's easier to just expunge the heretics and force each side into its own echo chamber, but that achieves nothing.

Good Read: Top 10 Signs that You are a Moral Idiot

2007-02-23T14:20:00.000-05:00

From Kerplunk.

The Moonbat Hitman Profile'd

2007-02-22T15:24:00.000-05:00

Hat tip: LGF

In brief: Mentally unstable international socialist (iNazi) activist decides to attack someone because he's a Republican. Walks up to the front door and beats up the poor guy in front of his roommates.

Fredricksburg.com article

Michelle Malkin looks at the perpetrator's leanings.

LGF's post and a follow-up.

If you check Michelle Malkin's compilation of some of the iNazi's internet stuff, you'll see a stereotypical Jew-hating wannabe warrior.

Remember, if someone comes to assault you at home, you probably have good reason to assume a threat to your life. In most states this is enough to make a case for justifiable homicide.

Big Surprise.

2007-01-27T18:02:00.000-05:00

Hi-def DVD security cracked.

I'll explain this as shortly as I can. The entertainment media are on the wrong road to dealing with digital piracy. Internet bandwidths will creep up over the next few years and make it feasible to transmit larger and larger files between more and more computers. People will keep finding ways around the security, and the way information travels over the internet, there is no practical way to stop this.

This is not the same as shoplifting. Morally, sure, it's exactly the same. Practically, it's hugely different. If digital piracy were compared to shoplifting, it would be shoplifting in a super department store with no walls, no cameras, and one guy trying to be cashier, floorwalker, and security guard all at once. They can catch some people but not everyone, and the more obsessed they become with catching thieves, the more inconvenient it makes things for honest people.

The fact of the matter is that the business model of the 20th century is becoming obsolete. It is simply insane to think you can control the distribution of anything that exists in a form that can be transmitted over the Internet. Something more akin to a patronage model would be more effective.

If that has to be explained, it involves giving up on trying to make your money off of the distribution of your product. Instead, you focus on getting your money before the product is released, effectively holding it hostage until a certain total in donations has been achieved. Once donations reach a certain threshold, you release the product, distributing it for free online, or for nominal fees on hard media. That threshold should be however much you need to cover the costs of developing the Product. In order to encourage people to send you money, offer as much in advance as you have to in order to whet their appetites.

This model may seem strange and of questionable effectiveness, but I have to ask, is trying to control distribution really the most lucrative way to go in the information era?

Should I go earlier?

2007-01-05T12:16:00.000-05:00

I know I said I was shooting for a presidential run in '24. However, depending on the success of my ideological peers in earlier elections, I might go as early as '20, which is the earliest I would legally be able to run.

Today's batch of news from LGF is rather upsetting.

First off, another outrageous Mexican incursion(LGF) goes unpunished. Here's the The Arizona News report.

Secondly, the Jerusalem Post is reporting that the United States is going to give 86 million dollars to the 'security' forces of Mahmoud "Abu Mazen" Abbas, a so-called moderate leader of the "moderate" Fatah party who "moderately" supports the Islamic supremacist goals of Al Qaeda. (LGF and It Shines for All)

President Bush sorely needs one of these.

Happy New Year 2007!

2007-01-01T02:38:00.000-05:00

The Good: Saddam Hussein is dead, Kofi Annan has stepped down, and I made a spiffy title banner.

The Bad: John Bolton is losing his job, and I'm slacking on the cartoons.

The crazy New Year lady on TV tried to say the Democratic victory was an amazing seismic shift.
Listen, a midterm Congress shift to oppose the President in his second term is historically predictable and boring. It's nothing unusual or amazing.

A steaming pile of thought

2006-11-27T13:46:00.000-05:00

At risk of being called a McCarthyist toolbag, I will talk of a grand socialist conspiracy. When most people hear the word conspiracy, they think of elite power barons gathering in smoke-filled rooms and plotting the demise of their opponents. I do not believe that is an accurate portrayal of things.

Rather, I would call this a Gramscian memetic conspiracy. Memetic conspiracies are simply a collection of memes (ideas, stories, paradigms) that when accepted, bring a person to desire a certain goal. The effect is that when the memes are spread, people will independently of one another work towards that goal. Antonio Gramsci was an Italian socialist philosopher who lucidly figured out that the USA and other Western nations would not be violently overthrown from within by a glorious proletarian uprising, because of something he called cultural hegemony.

Hegemony: The predominant influence, as of a state, region, or group, over another or others. (American Heritage Dictionary, from Dictionary.com)

Cultural hegemony exists by defining a certain set of ideas as common sense. Because American common sense (at least, as it existed in the early 20th century) precluded the rise of communism, not only at home but wherever American thought had taken hold, the only way to truly establish Marxism would be to redefine common sense.

Thus, a Gramscian memetic conspiracy is the propagation of ideas, stories, and paradigms whose effect are to alter the public definition of common sense.

What to do about it
There are three main businesses that together provide the typical American with probably 90% or more of what he knows: Education, entertainment, and journalism. A successful 21st-century renaissance will require all three of these fields to be developed toward an individualist/capitalist philosophy.

While there is always more to be done, admirable inroads have been made in education, through various private efforts, and journalism, through the rise of the blogs. I believe entertainment is our weakest sphere at the moment.

Oh Snap!

2006-11-20T20:54:00.000-05:00

In per capita GDP, Alabama beats the UK.

How the mighty have fallen.

Aftermath

2006-11-10T00:10:00.000-05:00

Republicans lost the election.
However, conservatives won, considering the referendums that did and did not get passed. This was a scolding of the Republican party for their failure to lead. This was not an abandonment of modern conservatism

Rather than set bold examples for people to follow, they allowed the opposition to squelch all efforts for real reforms, and for that they have been thrown in the gutter.

The only dispute is whether the Republicans deserve punishment as much as America deserves to be punished with the result of that punishment.

Now we are going to have a Mafia wife as Speaker of the House, second in succession to the Presidency in the event of death or incapacitation. I hope you're proud of yourselves, America.

Social Security? Forget about it. The party who applauded themselves for doing nothing during the last State of the Union address is now in charge. The ~~New~~ Old Deal-era system will go on and government will be sucking on your wallet your whole life and you'll have to live to 80 to break even. As more and more people live that long, the funds will be drying up. My generation will live to see Social Security's real crisis. Some of the older folks may not think it's their problem because they'll get their piece before they die. Those people don't give two craps about what the next generation will inherit. Screw them.

Taxes? Sure. They'll creep up, and more complications will be written into the tax code, as ways to lighten the load on the middle class one day are loopholes to be tightened the next day. At one point we were nearly ready to bring the FairTax to the floor, but you can kiss that goodbye now. The FairTax bill is supposed to entirely eliminate the current federal tax code and replace it with a slim, sexy consumer-level consumption tax. It would lift a great deal of dead weight from the economy, but lifting dead weight is not exactly the Democrats' idea of a solution. They wouldn't be able to get past the initial elimination of IRS jobs.

Iraq? Okay, it looks as if we are going to treat this country as an unsightly turd and flush it down the toilet. ~~Radical~~ Orthodox Muslim militias are probably going to be running the place within months, and going back to their usual business of calling for death to the Jews and the infidel nations. Iran and Syria will have their hands in the pot trying to whip up an ally. When Iraq is once more safe for terrorists, it will become the new central terrorist training ground, and horrible new plots will be hatched for the coming years.

The Democratic Party does not have a Plan or a Better Way or a New Direction. They won purely as a testament to the Republicans' failure. This much will be proven true in the next two years.

2006 Election Roundup

2006-11-07T22:19:00.000-05:00

Early statistical analysis of exit polls indicates that Bob Casey (D) has beaten incumbent Rick Santorum (R) for US Senator, and incumbent Ed Rendell (D) has beaten Lynn Swann (R) for Governor.

Someone tried to poll me when I went to vote today, and I ~~ate his liver with fava beans and a nice chianti~~ ignored himbecause I had pressing things to do after voting. I also voted a straight ticket for Republicans. That means that I and everyone else like me is not factored into the Associated Press' Premature Gloating Machine.

Rendell Beats Swann!!*
Casey Beats Santorum!!*

*Probably.
Of course, I am fully prepared for the probability that the predicted winners are the actual winners. Right now the votes are counted at around 60-40 in favor of the announced winners, 41% of precincts reporting. In statewide elections that sort of thing isn't likely to shift very much.

A Hero

2006-10-17T21:38:00.000-04:00

via LGF
Bangladeshi editor beaten by crowd including state officials

Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, editor of the English-language Bangladeshi newspaper The Weekly Blitz, was at work when a crowd stormed the premises, beat him up, and looted his company's safe.

It is because he advocated a reasonable policy regarding Israel; that is, he would prefer to let the Jews live. Those who marauded his office thought differently.

This is not a time to tread lightly to avoid enraging these people further. They and their pedophile prophet must be mocked until they learn to handle it properly: Laugh it off or ignore it. Homicidal rage is not acceptable. How would I like it if you mocked a certain 1st century Jewish cult leader? I don't know. It might be funny. It might not. I can be sure though that I will not kill anyone for it.

However, when people beat up and rob a newspaper editor in his office, I find myself thirsting for blood. Especially when it's just a newspaper editor who thinks it's a bad idea to kill the Jews.

Update: Therefore, I have done what is held by so many as equivalent to waging a holocaust. I have drawn a cartoon.

Moreover, (see Israel Matzav) the website for the Weekly Blitz appears to have been a casualty of this jihad, because there is now only one article at the site.

The International Zionist Conspiracy Owes me money

2006-10-17T02:29:00.000-04:00

A recent addition to the sidebar, if you look a bit below the Alliance of Free Blogs emblem, you will notice a "The International Zionist Conspiracy Owes Me ${VAR} For Services Rendered". This is currently a very vague estimate, and of course while I am offering my bloggery freely to the world, it is nice to know the monetary value of things you are doing for free.

Because of the "butterfly effect", everything I do probably helps the International Zionist Conspiracy in some way or another, therefore, everything on this blog will be attributed a base rate.

Regular posts will be attributed $.10 per word, and pictures $10 per hour spent on them, or if I forgot how long it took to make, $30 for color and $10 for non-colored. And a 50% markup will be applied to anything that pertains particularly to Jews or Israel.

But I am doing this for free. However, I will subtract any money I actually receive on behalf of the International Zionist Conspiracy from the figure in the sidebar.

Last night's episode of South Park

2006-10-12T15:22:00.000-04:00

South Park made brilliant hash of the 9/11 conspiracy theorists.

As it turns out the government is behind the conspiracy. More specifically, a conspiracy to placate those who couldn't handle the simple truth that a bunch of pissed off Muslims pulled it off. The notion that the government was actually behind the 9/11 attacks is a comfortable lie meant to satisfy the loony conspiracy theorists, and promote the illusion that the US government is actually all-powerful.

Of course, just to screw with everyone's minds they had to throw in the Hardly Boys. I need to scrub my brain with steel wool.

Mahmoud Abbas is a duplicitous jihadi toolbag

2006-10-06T14:43:00.000-04:00

But you knew that already.

It's amazing how Israel tolerates these people as much as they do.

Comment Spam

2006-09-22T18:16:00.000-04:00

All right, my comments are not for other people to pimp their blogs with long-winded articles.

Reply to my posts or other comments.

The particular comment, now deleted, is by one who did not bother to read my post on conspiracy theories.

To sum up the laws of realistic conspiracy theory,

1. Stupidity is more likely than malice. Known sources of stupidity such as bureaucratic inertia explain why 'the government let it happen' much better than talk of sinister collusion with other forces. An evil plan takes advantage of the government's sluggishness, not its politicians looking for power plays.

2. In order to convince people of a lie, you simply have to tell it to them, and then control the most likely places they will go to fact-check you. People are curious enough to investigate some of the things people tell them, but lazy enough to not do very much investigation.

3. Misdirection buys a lot of time for the evil plan. There is a lot to be said about timing, but do not confuse a logical chain of cause and effect, action and reaction, for a conspiracy flow chart.

2006-09-17T23:07:00.000-04:00

Repost of a comment I left in Mohamsterdance

George guy said...
It's always amazing how obviously false is the idea that the Scriptures given to the Jews and Christians have become as corrupted as Islam says.

The Dead Sea scrolls and other ancient copies of the text show just how faithful, to the point of what some might describe as obsessive compulsion, those who copied the Scripture were. The rate of error is so phenomenally low, it is impossible to interpret the statement that "the Jews' and Christians' Scriptures are corrupt from their original meaning" as something other than a complete falsehood.

The despicable slaughter of Christians, not only Roman Catholics but Orthodox and Protestant, the latter two having no connection to the pope, shows just how mad, insane, and bloodthirsty the Islamic noise machine is.

You think you know something about God when you come in here to 'warn' the 'kuffar' of supernatural woes. So I am asking you, anonymous Muslim heckler, to consider this, even though there are many who doubt your willingness to do so.

In the beginning, the world was perfect. And yet God allowed the world to be handed over to the forces of sin. Evil was allowed to flourish, and we have been stuck with the result ever since. That is because there was a greater good that had to be preserved. Something that God refused to violate even if it meant allowing all other forms of righteousness to be suspended, because all other forms of righteousness would be worthless without it. That is of course freedom. The freedom to make our own choices and our own judgements. It is as sacred as that.

I don't expect you to change religions over this.
I only expect you to understand why I will not submit.

9/17/2006 08:07:38 PM

I am seriously angry about the recent killings supposedly provoked by one of Pope Benedict XVI's statements. I will draw a cartoon. If the cartoon turns out to be excellent, I expect an excellent fatwah calling for my death.

Neofederalism and George's Policies

2006-09-09T04:35:00.000-04:00

The meaning of Neofederalism
Federalism is the doctrine of federally distributed power, balanced between individuals, local governments and a federal government. In many respects, federalism is a synthesis of confederation and nationalization. Neofederalism is a resurrection of this concept, focusing not just on the balance between state and federal power, but the total balance among individual, local, county, state, and federal powers, and takes into account the positions of both of the old Federalist and Anti-Federalist parties. It is intentional that this name is reminiscent of the United States' Revolutionary roots, and not coincidental that it is similar to the Reaganite movement of New Federalism. Critics may note that New Federalism actually started with Nixon. Those people get a gold star sticker. Bad people can have occasional good ideas. Unlike certain people, I don't demonize people willy-nilly.

Why?
People need Neofederalism because the hazards of unchecked democracy are made most clear when various functions of government are permitted to operate at the wrong regional level. Great tension is frequently created when people of one political philosophy gain control of the government at the state or federal level, inflict their doctrines statewide or nationally, and thereby inevitably upset anyone who didn't vote for them--a minority to be sure, but seldom less than 40 percent. It is necessary to bring as much government as possible to the most local level possible, so that individuals are not victimized by a necessarily distant and impersonal government.

This is the overarching principle-- that the proper chain of command be observed. The People are the final and sovereign rulers of America, and it is beyond any earthly authority to abridge their rights. The local governments should be the only ones that actually involve themselves in the affairs of individuals whenever possible. County governments should be limited to dealing with townships and municipalities as wholes whenever possible, state governments should be limited to dealing with counties as wholes whenever possible, and the federal government should be limited to dealing with states as wholes whenever possible.

George's Policies
Here they are in alphabetical order. Note that anything marked as an Ultimate Solution™ is not necessarily supposed to be executed as government policy, and may involve significant private effort. These are somewhat separated from Neofederalism because I recognize that even people who agree with that doctrine may be at variance with some or all of my opinionated positions on specific issues. For the most part, they are economically conservative and socially moderate-going-liberal. And most importantly, if you disagree with them, you are probably wrong.

What I offer, whenever possible, are actual solutions. I lay out what I would do about the issue if I had any say in the matter, I lay out recommendations for the private sector and for you the individual. I do not say "I have a plan" or "There is a better way" and then leave you wondering what the plan or the way is.

Abortion
People have a right to do whatever they want to their own bodies. A baby is not your own body. A baby is somebody else, and therefore killing a baby should be counted as manslaughter, unless it can be proven that there were serious health risks to the mother. Or if the pregnancy was the result of a sex-related crime, which I hope would be minimized by the mass armament of women. If a manslaughter charge for having an abortion for no good reason sounds harsh--yeah, that's the idea. Sex is serious business, people! Don't do it unless you're prepared for the consequences.

Education
The current public school system is a disgrace. At young ages, children must not be deprived of parental guidance, and older children should be allowed the opportunity to begin some kind of gainful employment. The current paradigm in which kids are schooled full time from 1st grade (and increasingly from kindergarten) to 12th grade, and shuffled off immediately to college, is creating a serious problem. We end up with a whole generation of young adults who have no employment experience and a market oversaturated with college degrees. This is the Ultimate Solution™ to the education problem:

Privatize the education system. A reasonable intermediate step would be to attach public funds to students in the form of vouchers so that their parents can have a choice in the school their children go to. Bad schools will close, good schools will prosper. A fully privatized system would make more efficient use of the money, though.
Reorganize the system so that students are no longer grouped in age-segregated grades, but make actual academic progress a measure of how close the student is to finishing. Create a curriculum standard that allows an 'average' student to complete a basic education by age 14. A basic education should provide a student with the following.

In English: sufficient literacy to be able to read something aloud at a normal conversational speed without stumbling; familiarity with classics of English literature; and legible penmanship.
In mathematics: total mastery of basic arithmetic, and competency up to trigonometry.
In science: the basics of chemistry, biology, geology, meteorology, and physics.
In social studies: A reasonably detailed knowledge of American history, familiarity with global geography, a basic knowledge of the history of the rest of civilization.
In health/P.E.: A reasonably detailed knowledge of human physiology and nutrition, the effects of different types of exercise, and knowledge of the formal rules of at least four common competitive sports.
Sufficient exposure to arts, crafts, and foreign languages that the student can make a reasonably informed decision regarding which ones to commit to studying, if he or she has not already.

Make schools for basic education operate on a flexible schedule. In an increasingly "Open 24 hours" society, it is more difficult for parents to spend time with their children if the children are kept on an 8 am to 3 pm schedule. It would be better for families if kids' school schedules were tied to the work schedules of one of their parents. Same hours, same days off, same vacations. This would solve a great many worries about declining parental involvement.
After basic education, employment should be considered on an equal priority with education, with school being part-time. It is a great mistake to put employment off until people are finished with school, because that creates a serious risk of a person having no practically useful skills whatsoever. All education after the basic level should be designed to primarily consider part time students. Nobody should be going to school full time unless they know exactly what they want to study and have something that they can fall back on if they can't get a job in their intended line of work.

What You Can Do Right Now:
If you have kids, do not put them in the standard public system. School them at home or in a private school if you can afford it. If you're worried about social interaction, help them find some activities. YMCA, Scouts, martial arts classes, church youth groups. The truth is that kids only need a few friends their own age. There's no point in sticking them in large groups as the public schools' doctrine goes. Children are horrible to each other. I'm sure you remember elementary school. You hung out with certain people, avoided others, and there were always one or two people who you absolutely hated. There is no justifiable reason to force those children together for what frequently ends up being YEARS. If you want children to behave like adults, let them learn from adults. Childhood is overrated. Grownups get to play with bigger, more powerful, and more expensive toys.

Death Penalty
It reduces the number of criminals. Criminals are enemies of Civilization itself. Therefore the death penalty, when applied appropriately, is a good thing. Appropriately would of course be when used against--

First degree murder
Multiple counts of any other degree of murder
Multiple counts of rape or child molestation

'Sinking to their level'? Hardly. Sinking to their level would be deciding to ignore the founding principles of civilization and mimicking their crimes. Giving them a nice relaxing lethal injection is merciful. It prevents recidivism and is way nicer than flensing with lemon juice-dipped sporks, which some people probably deserve.

Election Reform
I'm not concerned about campaign financing so much as the fact that people are allowed to vote for people they don't even know much about--the voting is frequently based solely on what letter is next to the candidate's name. My solution for this is simple. Mandate that all ballots be of the write-in type. (Or type-in, this is the 21st century.) You get the name of an office, and a box to write a name in. You do not get a list of prepicked people for you to select from. You must write the name in yourself. If you don't know anything about who's running for a particular office, you have no business voting for that office.

Guns
Every adult and responsible child should have a cache of small arms at their disposal. The right of self-defense is important, because the true value of life, liberty, and yes--property, cannot be fully realized unless people are prepared and willing to make them matters of life and death. Calling the police is great and all, but there is absolutely no way to expect them to respond quickly enough to an immediate threat. If someone breaks into your house or your car, or physically threatens you or your loved ones, you had better be ready to kill them. That is how civilization survives--by refusing to tolerate those who refuse to recognize the sanctity of life, liberty, and property. There is no justification for disarming good citizens. Anyone who says otherwise is lying. We need to purge the books of extraneous gun control laws, and ensure that, wherever it is at all reasonable, the use of deadly force in self-defense is not prosecuted. Don't be fooled by those who 'only' want 'common sense' laws, like requiring you to keep your gun unloaded and locked up with the ammo locked up in another room. That won't do you any good. The only way you'll have a weapon when you need it is if it's accessible.
What You Can Do Right Now:
If you don't own a gun, get one.

Immigration
Immigration is especially important in a nation composed of people of all ethnicities. America is a party that a great many people want to join, and it is important that we do not inhibit the immigration of people who want to join our society. At the same time, we cannot permit people who have no respect for our laws to just hang around here without consequence. Deportation is doable. It won't be pretty. See Mexico

Islam
Islam has a problem. Islamic supremacists are waging terrorism with bombs, knives, and lawyers, and the existence of "a vast majority of moderate Muslims" doesn't change that. The relative silence of the general Islamic community legitimizes the West's concerns that Islam is just rotten. These acts of butchery do nothing but stain the image of Islam and portray it as a bloody religion, and reading the Qu'ran does nothing to soothe those images. There is no peace in knowing that our long-held ideals of freedom are threatened by a horde of murderous barbarians who do not respect free speech, free religion, or free commerce. There is nothing peaceful about refusing to stop them. Do peaceful Muslims exist? Of course. That doesn't mean that they are the mainstream Muslims. And it is really tangential as far as most of humanity is concerned as to whether Islam survives or not. What is important is that Muslim supremacism be crushed. It is up to Muslims whether they want their religion to survive, and it ultimately comes down to whether there are sufficient numbers of Muslims who understand that they will not survive except by respecting our freedom and abandoning all efforts to undermine it.
What You Can Do Right Now:
While much has been said about certain pastimes of the prophet of Islam, Mohammed, it is not necessary to mock Islam to take a stand against Islamic supremacism. Progress can be made by rigorously criticising Islamic supremacism itself. However, since the concept of religious freedom cannot be properly understood unless it is recognized that people cannot be expected to treat a religion as sacred if they have no faith in it, it can be effective to mock Islam itself. Muslims who understand the importance of freedom aren't a problem and won't be sufficiently offended for the rest of us to need to worry about them. We can make things up to them later. Those who go into riots over a few cartoons, screw them. It is highly advised though, that you do not engage in these acts without taking proper security precautions againt possible backlash.

Marriage and Sex
Not the government's business, except to the extent that careless sex causes pregnancy--see Abortion.

Mexico
The Mexican government has in the past conducted military exercises involving popping over the border, and explicitly instructed its citizens on how to cross the borders of the United States. We should welcome Mexicans who actually want to be a part of our society, but we should not welcome those who just want to take advantage of our schools and hospitals, and refuse to learn English and form pseudo-nationalist reconquista movements. Considering that Mexico has not only openly assisted its citizens wishing to illegally immigrate to the United States, but also has been complicit in the movement of Middle Eastern illegal immigrants and members of the Mara Salvatrucha gang, it is quite legitimate to say that Mexico, as it currently is, is a threat to national security. Considering how many Mexicans want to live in the United States, all options, including military action and permanent annexation, should be considered if the Mexican government cannot be persuaded to adopt more respectful relations with the US.

Money
The problems of inflation and deficit spending would be greatly improved by returning to a solid currency based in a real commodity. In short, gold and/or silver.
Restoring real value to our currency should be a top priority. A dollar should not be a Federal Reserve Arbitrary Unit of Debt. A unit of measure is useless unless it is fixed to a standard. Right now the dollar is fixed to no tangible standard. It is supposed to be fixed to the value of a particular amount of silver. The government would be forced to a much higher level of financial discipline if the monetary system were restored to being based on something real.
This is how it should work: You make your dollars out of actual silver. You can either carry a bunch of those around, or store them somewhere and get claim tickets-- that's what the paper money should be--redeemable on demand for hard coin. There's nothing wrong with financial instruments, just that the unit of currency should represent the value of --and be readily redeemable for-- some amount of a real commodity. Remember: A paper note has no real value, unless it is readily redeemable for a fixed amount of something valuable. I'm repeating myself because everyone is so used to money being a pure abstraction, and they think it's fine. It's not fine. Fiat money causes the problem of inflation--the government can easily steal the value from your money by creating more of it, allowing huge deficits and uncontrolled spending. This needs to be fixed before another inflation crisis leaves millions of families impoverished in a new great depression.

The Ultimate Solution™ to the currency problem:
Restore the dollar to a silver standard. Go ahead and create a parallel gold-based currency (we'll call it the Eagle after the original US $10 gold coin) whose exchange rate floats against the dollar on a day-to-day basis. We have the technology to make sure this isn't difficult for people. We would just need small ticker screens at every place of commerce that announce how many dollars make an eagle today. One day it's 50.54, another it's 52.05, the next 51.85, you get the idea. But make the dollar the base unit of measure for value. You do not change the silver content of the dollar, because the definition of a dollar is 371.25 grains of silver.

What You Can Do Now:
Participate in privately isssued precious metal currencies (i.e. Liberty Dollar). That is, accept them, keep a portion of your funds in one of those currencies, and try to spend them. And offer favorable rates for your services to those who pay in gold or silver.

Old People
Old people are valuable members of society, and in reality only a few of them are what could be called senile. The majority of old people are full of experience and knowledge ungarbled by Alzheimer's or other forms of dementia. We should put them to use as teachers for our children, which would also pay for their living expenses better than any taxpayer funded program.

Social Security
Far too inefficient. Get rid of it. See Old People

The United Nations
The UN is an embarrassment unto the human race. The United States should cut off funding for the UN and demolish their building in New York.
While the best solution for relocating the UN headquarters is to let the other member nations fight over where to put it, it would be highly amusing to put up money to relocate the UN headquarters to Antarctica.

War
The possibility of innocent people getting killed is precisely why war isn't to be waged lightly. When the alternative is more innocent people getting killed, war is a perfect solution. Diplomacy is for dealing with rational people. The world has a great many rational people who don't need to be shot. But that is not everyone. When you have to deal with someone irrational, who can't be persuaded by logical arguments, force is what works. That is the simple fact. And when you do have to invade a country, you destroy it until the people are willing to abandon everything that contributed to the problem in the first place. For example, if certain countries still want a national socialist, communist, or Muslim supremacist government even after being invaded, it means we haven't killed them enough.

Ah, television.

2006-09-05T22:12:00.000-04:00

I was watching the new season premier of House, all in all rather good. And I didn't bother to change the channel, and so was rewarded with the first episode of Standoff.

Reasonably good, I don't know if I'll watch it regularly. A series about hostage negotiators isn't the most thrilling thing in the world, but I will watch it at least a couple more times to see how it goes.

I give them one and a half thumbs up for having a Muslim terrorist on the first episode.

Of course, he's not the stereotypical person of Arabic extraction, but an American of Caucasian ancestry. Understandable, I give no demerits for that.

What was disappointing though was that they felt like they had to soften things even more by making the villain's crisis about his dysfunctional relationship with his mother, and he was just using Islam as an excuse. The terrorism expert says if he were a real suicide bomber, there would be no realistic possibility of negotiating with him, and the day is saved only because he is actually a plain run of the mill disturbed twenty-year-old.

That seems like a bit of a copout.

A civilization is shaped to a considerable extent by its entertainment. We tell stories to reflect reality. The best stories are those that reveal some truth about life. Stories are told mainly to tell either what really happened, what might have happened, or what we wish happened.

Now, if by putting a twist on what seems at first glance to be a stereotypical "Durka Durka Mohammed Jihad" terrorist attack but is actually slightly different, is meant just for having an original plot line, fine. If however, it is meant to give lip service to the existence of Islamic terror while cutting out the substance by injecting as much political correctness as possible, then shame on them.

Of course I could be overanalyzing things, but with the recent problems with South Park, you have to wonder to what extent the entertainment industry is consciously tiptoeing around the issue.

Is it an intellectually honest attempt at creativity, or a wishful attempt at denying the existence of a large threat fueled by madness, by dissecting it into a bunch of tiny ones fueled by semi-rationalized dysfunctional relationships?

That's a question that has to be answered.

I'm not saying every TV series and movie for the next five years should feature Wahhabi Islamic supremacists as the bad guys, or even lots of them. Just a couple would be enough.

The point is this:
Trying to be clever is okay.
Trying to deflect hostility from the real world's bad guys by softening them up on TV is not so good.

More below the fold

Shoebat brings forth the Cluebat

2006-08-12T23:52:00.000-04:00

At Euphoric Reality,
an interview with ex-terrorist Walid Shoebat.

"The Naziphobes were right as well."

Shoebat's website.

Hizb'Allah's immunity.

2006-08-04T03:38:00.000-04:00

Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah representing his odious gang of thieves and murderers, in a fresh cartoon.

I took a bit of time on this, and I'm in a bit of a financial tight spot, so if the Elders of Zion would please get my check in the mail, that would be fantastic.

For you antisemetic idiots out there, that was a joke. I WISH somebody was paying me to do this.

The nature of blogging

2006-07-31T18:27:00.000-04:00

Something many bloggers probably understand, but others do not, is that the subject matter of your blog will affect your audience. If you write about beer, your readers will tend to be people interested in beer. If you write about hockey, your readers will tend to be people interested in hockey. Obvious, right?

The thing is that very few people are truly single-minded. Both bloggers and readers.
If you delve into another topic, your readers may still be interested. And moreover, they may refer your article in their own circles. The effect being that one tangential article, if reasonably profound and clever, may end up attracting a small horde of readers from parts of the blogosphere that you normally don't deal with.

Important to remember is that these people are not trolls. They are people whose attention you snared with your tangential article. They will comment on your tangential article and disappear into the woodwork unless they happen to like the subject matter of the rest of your blog. If you don't want to have to worry about strange people appearing in your audience in big chunks, don't make a random political post that attracts the attention of Little Green Footballs, Glenn Reynolds, or the Rottweiler.

Obsession

2006-07-30T03:50:00.000-04:00

This is a nice movie.

One has to wonder what it will take to counter the threat of Islamic supremacism, or how far they'll have to make it before the world wakes up.

Minimum wage and estate tax

2006-07-29T01:36:00.000-04:00

From Communist News Network

Two things I must say, and I must say them concisely.

1. Cutting taxes is NOT a giveaway. Not ever. The money is OURS, not the government's. It's really quite simple. The money belongs to We the People, not Uncle Sam. Therefore, tax cuts are not a "GIVEAWAY".

2. Raising the minimum wage will raise the wages of people who help provide our most essential services. That will raise the cost of living, meaning anyone who is making just enough to get by will ultimately still be making just enough to get by. It will also not raise the wages of people who are already making well above that. That will hurt the middle and upper classes, and bring the lower class exactly nowhere.

That's the long and the short of it. Now, go forth and tell your politicians off, for being utter dimwits.

You have to be about 12% as smart as President Bush in order to believe in minimum wage.

Aaron's rantblog hacked again.

2006-07-26T21:03:00.000-04:00

The wonderful dancing Mohammed hamsters are gone.
The Mohamsterdance mirror is still up (sort of), but since the hamster images were hotlinked from aarons.cc, it's not as pretty as it was.

The Crusade has failed. Submit to the unstoppable tide of Islam.

Fourth of July Words.

2006-07-03T20:16:00.000-04:00

People accomplish many things by controlling the usage and definition of words. The Lenin-wannabe Kos is currently whining about the hijacking of the American flag and Independence Day for some malicious nationalistic purpose.

Dictionary.com definition: Nationalism
Dictionary.com definition: Patriotism

Patriotism is defined simply as "love and devotion to one's country"

Nationalism has multiple definitions, including patriotism, but also the belief in national independence(from a single foreign nation or from many nations), and the belief that your nation's culture and interests should be considered first.

To an extent that's true, and these words are most definitely related in their meaning. However, that Princeton dictionary sounds like it might have been written by communists, as it seems to deliberately muddle the difference between nationalism in the form of national socialism versus national individualism. Of course, to the lefties, there is no difference. All flag-waving is the same.

In the interest of repairing this linguistic damage, tell your lefty friends about the multiple meanings of the word nationalism and explain how it works differently when comparing an individualist versus a socialist mindset.

A scientific solution to this controversy.

2006-07-03T16:58:00.001-04:00

By the time people finish reading this, they will tell me in condescending tones that I am too smart to be a creationist. (Assuming for the moment that anyone reads this, anyway :P ) If you're not interested in a brief argument, skip a bit and scroll down to the colorful part at the end, in which I explain how the controversy can be settled.

A post by the Rottweiler, reacting to the latest stupidity of the ACLU, might be characterized as a 'carpet-bombing' of the Anarch0-Communist Litigation Union. His one mistake was to mention their rabid defense of Darwinism. At least it seems like a mistake to the considerable number of conservative Darwinists. Because after all, they are sure that doctrine happens to be correct. Even granting that hypothetical possibility, it is still a fact that Darwinism was never properly scientifically introduced. It was shoehorned into the public education system with a great deal of assistance from the ACLU.

I could go on about some interesting bits of evidence, which I freely admit have been gleaned off of biased websites like Answers in Genesis or TrueOrigin, their nature invalidating the value of the content because they were written by a bunch of religious fanatics pretending to be scientists.
I could mention the salt content of the oceans suggesting that the Earth isn't quite as old as 'every scientist' insists ('Every scientist' being of course, orthodox neo-Darwinists because accepting such doctrine is a prerequisite for being a 'real scientist').
The amount of helium (generated by alpha decay of radioactive elements) retained in zircon crystals in rocks, when considering the known rate at which helium diffuses out, indicates that the rocks probably younger than 'all the real scientists' think--not to mention indicating that our understanding of the mechanics of radioactive decay is not as complete as we thought it was.
I could mention some of the physiological problems involved in the evolution of cetaceans from Ambulocetus, including the fact that the nose couldn't be moved in gradual increments from the snout to the top of the head--a serious restructuring of the skull would have to have occurred at some point.

I could mention the obvious gross inadequacy of mutation and natural selection to accomplish everything evolutionists claim. If a species can reproduce and not get killed off, it survives. That's it. If the mutations it suffers are mainly tiny bits of degeneration that barely affect survival over a single generation, the species will survive, but accumulated over multiple generations the species will become weaker and less able to adapt to different environments. Nature isn't so much a vicious battle between species to gain advantages over one another, but a vicious (and futile) battle between species to keep from losing what they still have. That's the nature of an information system, such as the DNA/RNA system underlying all organic life on Earth. A vast proportion of the system's energy must be poured into error control. This is not to say that scrambled information will never make sense and mean something different--there certainly can be instances of that, but the general and overarching trend will be that the system will decay without intelligent maintenance. I suspect this argument is why it seems like every other creationist scientist is someone with an education in engineering rather than natural sciences.

But anyway, yes, there's a great deal of evidence of adaptation in some organisms, which occasionally manage amazing things like avoiding being killed by antibiotics and some toxic chemicals, which is frequently and nauseatingly announced as proof that creationists are a bunch of idiots. Worms develop a resistance to cadmium poisoning. Methycillin resistant staph. aureus. Of course, creationists are saying that organisms tend to lose information, not that they never adapt. But that's beside the point. It's all right to misrepresent the creationists and move the goalposts around because they're a bunch of idiots anyway. You could point out the discovery of how the worms survived the cadmium--the worms had lost the ability to regulate the enzyme that bound up cadmium, and their cells were cranking out the stuff like crazy. Great if you're living in a toxic dump site, but a waste of energy anywhere else. Nobody's disputing that it's a beneficial adaptation (in certain circumstances), just that it represents something other than a loss of information.

What about antibiotic resistant germs? I'm not too well versed in microbiology, but it is frequently pointed out that the resistance exists in (a portion of) the germ's population before it is ever introduced to an antibiotic, so in many cases it's pre-existing information being manipulated by selective breeding. In many cases, antibiotics depend on the target organism possessing certain receptors that render it vulnerable to the drug, in which case a loss of those receptors would improve drug resistance (though also reduce its ability to use those receptors for other things, which may prove a disadvantage in other respects)

Of course, people say that human history proves the Bible wrong, but verifiable recorded history gets extremely fuzzy going back farther than around 2000 BC. Incidentally, the Ussher timeline places the global Flood at 2348 BC, and there is evidence indicating that even the most supposedly ancient civilizations, including Babylon and Egypt, were actually founded after this time.

Of course, what's the point of repeating all this? It's just regurgitated sound bites from various creationist publications, the consensus in the scientific community is that humanity is a million years old, the Earth is four and a half billion years old, and the universe is thirteen billion years old. Sure, there are nutjobs who dispute those numbers, but they're not 'real scientists'. The issue has been settled a century ago, it's time to move on.

Except obviously it hasn't been settled. Despite the superhuman efforts of the 'scientific community', there are still several thousand people professing to be scientists, who think they know something different, and millions more laypeople who think they're right. Admittedly, they might be affected by religious beliefs. Religious beliefs can make people crazy and stupid, I won't dispute that. Seemingly unreligious beliefs can under some circumstances become like religions in their effects. Otherwise, there would be no explanation for Muslims, Scientologists, or communists. The problem is that at least the scientists, and a few incredibly wise laymen (some of whom even make dubious claims to be prophets) seem to do a reasonable job of being rational, which does cast some doubt on the notion that creationism is a quaint artifact of primitive religious behavior.

So how does one go about rectifying this? There is a great deal of confusion whose presence is largely thanks to the ACLU for using other-than-scientific methods to get people to accept a 'scientific theory', and to this we owe the fact that evolutionists with their 'mainstream' science publications can wail about the 'demise of science' and whine with relative impunity whenever a creationist book makes it onto a science bookshelf, all because a few unwashed illiterate hicks still believe that God is an actual being that does things (as in "performs activities" or "implements processes", a far worse sin than just believing in God). The first step to resolving a controversy, or any problem for that matter, is to recognize that it exists.

The Genesis Project

The solution is relatively simple in its design, but will be rather expensive in its execution. It requires getting the two main factions in this controversy to have some dialogue. The most effective way to get people to do something is to pay them money to do it, and that's where I get stuck because a vital prerequisite of executing this plan is acquiring a massive pile of cash to fund it.

1: Select 60 scientists with Ph.D.'s in a wide assortment of scientific fields. Thirty under the "naturalistic evolutionist" label, and thirty under the "biblical creationist" label. Admittedly there are many doctrinal variations within and beyond those two camps, but most of them lie somewhere between these two "mainstream extremes".
2: Each side draws up a list of experiments, many of which will be repeats of famous ones done in the past (Miller-Urey experiments come to mind) because all data will be required to come from experiments done under the Project. Each experiment will be supervised by an equal representation from both sides.
3: Prior to every experiment, all scientists prepare a prediction of the results. Score will be tallied based on which predictions are best met by the actual results.
4: The experiments will be scheduled so that there can a monthly 2-hour program on the Discovery Channel on the whole thing, for those without broadband Internet access that would allow them to get up to the minute reports of everything. Every month would include a general debate between all the scientists.

Some of the details could be easily subject to adjustment, like the manner in which the project is publicized, or the exact number of scientists to be involved(though I wouldn't recommend going any lower than 40 total scientists), but there should be absolutely no compromise on these points:
1. The management of the Project should be conducted with the utmost impartiality to any doctrinal camp.
After the Project begins there may be many groups of people from all sides of the issue who will accuse the Project of being a circus for the ridicule of one side or the other, or of any misconduct in favor of one side or the other. The Project must be unimpeachable in this respect.
2. The Project must be well-publicized.
A multimedia website, a television series, and books are all seriously recommended.

Excellent Pile of Text

2006-06-25T01:04:00.000-04:00

Never Again (@Anarchangel)

Hamas Front Organization Goes Wild.

2006-06-24T23:13:00.000-04:00

The Hamas-backed terrorist front group CAIR (Council for American-Islamic Relations) is apparently on a jihad against blog comments critical of Islam. (LGF)

Kosola: The Townhouse Affair

2006-06-22T20:37:00.000-04:00

Hat tip: The Plank and LGF

What do I think about this?

Well, a picture is worth a thousand words.

And cartoonists get lots of chicks, I'm told.

Update: The Puppy Blender is watching this more closely than I am.

News from the Future 1

2006-06-20T21:32:00.000-04:00

There are allegations that my future great-great-great-grandson has a time machine and is sending me news snippets. In actuality, I am making this up, but it could be real.

June 2, 2205
Palestinian Minister condemns Israeli strike
GAZA -
"If Israel is able to take the moral high ground and refrain from attacking Palestinians even if we fail to restrain our more enthusiastic brothers from launching a few rockets, we will talk about a truce," stated Mohammed Mohammed bin Abdullah the Deputy Minister of Negotiations for the Palestinian Authority, after a press conference held in front of his private pile of rubble in Gaza.
(Article Copyright 2205 Al Jazeera-British Broadcasting Corporation-Pyongyang Truth Distributors Conglomerate)

Much Ado About Numerals

2006-06-15T23:19:00.000-04:00

Hat tip to LGF and the LGF commentariat
A Google News search on the phrase "grim milestone" reveals two pages of links to news articles by backwards superstitious numerologists who think a multiple appearance, in casualty statistics, of the digit infamously known in America as "Zero", and "naught" to the limeys, signifies some kind of ill omen or something.

Considering that soldiers are dying in numbers slightly too large to raise a fuss over every hundred, they have to settle for the thousands. And half-thousands, so it seems. Of course, this is a quarter of ten thousand we're talking about, which might be what is making this number special. We are talking of course, about the number 2,500, for you math-impaired folks out there. That is how many US soldiers have died in Iraq since the invasion of 2003.

Of course, that's in our standard decimal number system.
In dodecimal, it would be 1544.
In hexadecimal, it would be 9C4.
In octal, it would be 4704.
In binary, it would be 100111000100.

How culturally insensitive it is to only make note of the round numbers in base-10 notation. Who paid attention when 1024 soldiers had died? 2048?

THEY'RE NUMBERS. 2500 is no more worse than 2499 than 2344 is worse than 2343.

When the toll reaches 3,000, do another news search for "grim milestone", and punch a journalist one time for every hit that search receives. I'm not being pessimistic. Whether it takes 6 months or 6 years for it to reach 3,000, somebody will be keeping count and the media will make a fuss about it.

A Storm is Brewing.

2006-06-12T21:41:00.000-04:00

And by that I mean, the Mr. Coffee is full of water, loaded with a filter full of 1/4 cup of ground hurricane, and the switch is on.

I am an attention starved little dick.

Aaron's rantblog is currently down for the time being, because Muslim supremacists have been attacking the host of that website and he needs to get some new security thingies squared away before relaunching. At least that's my understanding of it.

So, he made the Mohamsterdance. And someone's been posting under the name "Muslim community" (or sometimes "Mulsim community") insisting that all the crusaders are going to hell. Me, I'm crazy. I'm scared to death of actual bees, wasps, hornets, and their ilk. And yet I seem to think nothing of making an inflammatory statement against a religion of people with a demonstrated willingness to slaughter their critics.

Here are snippets from the comments section.

George guy said...

There will be many false prophets. By their fruits you shall know them.

By that criteria, I'm probably a better prophet than Muhammed.

6/11/2006 12:57:17 PM

Mulsim Community said...

to george guy, dont compare ur dirty self with our beloved prophit,,, u are pure piece of shit. no one can be compared of him,, even we muslims,,
[another response to someone else omitted]

6/12/2006 12:46:42 AM

George guy said...

Muslim community,
I'm not comparing myself to Mohammed. I would dishonor my whole family to suggest I was in any way similar to that pedophiliac pirate. Mohammed doesn't compare to me.

I have never molested children, whereas Mohammed married one and presumably molested her on a daily basis.
I have never killed any innocent human being, and definitely not whole towns and villages comprised largely of innocents, whereas this was Mohammed's bread and butter.
I have never ordered a man to kill his own father. Mohammed did this on at least one occasion that I know of.
I have never raped anyone. Mohammed would rape anyone.
I love Jews, generally speaking. Mohammed slaughtered them.
I'm sure there are other wicked acts that I probably haven't committed, that Mohammed did. But five points is enough to say that I am in a whole other league from Mohammed.

6/12/2006 06:54:39 PM

Memorial Day 2006

2006-05-29T12:43:00.000-04:00

Well, I'm still speaking English. The Nazis are more or less all dead and the ones left are harmless. Japan and Germany have mellowed out, and Iraq and Afghanistan are on their way. All this because we have a military full of people willing to die for their country. I am not a soldier because I am too much of a coward to find out for sure whether or not any of the armed forces would take me. I am not ashamed to admit it, and you are not being cleverly insulting by pointing it out.

But I am grateful to those who fight on my behalf, and those who have died in the process of doing so--The soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan recently, as well as those who have died in every war going back to the Revolution.

There are those who would use this day as a soapbox to bash our military, deride the government yet one more time, and insist that everyone who actually believes in what we are doing in reality hates America while they have nothing but the purest love for the nation. If any day is more appropriate to use as a soapbox to bash those people-- the elitist news media, the minions of Daily Kos, the Ward Churchills who urge the assassination of our officers, the stark raving lunatics who throw a ~~party~~ protest every time another two or three soldiers die--it is this day.

And if I may end on a happy note, three cheers for our most excellent doctors and medical technology, without which a whole lot more troops would be dead.

Eat this, Loose Change!

2006-05-18T01:58:00.000-04:00

Hat tip: Hot Air

Okay, I'm sure there are those who will say it's a fabrication. Yeah. Consider how many top league animators there are in the world. How many animators of that level exist who are unscrupulous enough to manufacture a terrorist attack? Consider what type of person most animators are. Can you seriously believe that Uncle Sam has a secret repository of the most evil animators in the world?

Conspiracy theories

2006-05-11T00:09:00.000-04:00

Hat tips: Screw Loose Change and LGF

Conspiracy theorists differ from normal thought and logic, but they tend to follow these general rules.

1. It is only necessary to observe the evidence that you wish to.

If 20 people witness an event and say it happened one way, and a 21st witness says something different, the 21st witness is more interesting.

2. A lack of evidence is only proof of the depth of the cover-up.

A good conspiracy is an unprovable one.

3. Anyone who doesn't agree with a conspiracy theory is either part of the cover-up (see rule 2) or just a close minded drone of the government.

Conspiracy theorists almost universally start out assuming that 'THEY/THEM' have an unlimited ability to falsify evidence and that most of the 'official version' of the event is a fabrication.

4. The law of inverse proportionality of authority.The validity of any source is inversely proportional to its authoritativeness .

Anyone who works for the government or a corporation is worthy of suspicion. Conversely, anyone who has no tangible credentials other than having "studied this for years and years" and possibly writing books is the best person to question about what really happened.

5. Occams Corollary: The complexity and difficulty of a conspiracy theory is only proof of the depth and deviousness of the conspiracy.

For the conspiracy theorist, any event in which certain details are even slightly mysterious is another round of a never-ending improvisational game of Mad Libs.

6. The Law of Infinite Permutations: Even in the case that an infinite amount of statements are proven wrong an equally infinite amount of new statements can be made.

A conspiracy theory is never disproven. When the theorist is faced with an inescapable fact, he just alters the theory to weave around it.

(Rules quoted from this article, examples mine)

While a number of generalizations can be made about conspiracy theorists (and 9/11 conspiracy theorists in particular), it is important to remember that sometimes real conspiracies happen. 9/11 was in fact the result of a conspiracy -- an Islamic supremacist conspiracy to destroy America. Here are my rules for realistic conspiracy theory.

1. Stupidity is more likely than malice.

Apparently the government had enough information that if it had smart people in the right places, 9/11 could have been stopped. I won't dispute that. What I will dispute is the notion that they somehow deliberately allowed, or even caused, it to happen. The fact is that anyone with an understanding of the scientific laws governing bureaucracies (Murphy's Law, the Peter Principle, etc.) would understand that there are thousands of ways the different reports and memoranda could manage to avoid being brought together.

A good, real conspiracy takes advantage of time-tested sources of stupidity to conceal the conspiracy's goals. For example, not being too secretive, but dividing the not-too-secretive business over multiple locations and counting on people who saw you not to add two and two, is a potentially winning conspiracy strategy. And indeed this is how the 19 hijackers on 9/11/2001 succeeded (for the most part)

2. People are curious but lazy, and will believe you if what you say sounds and feels like it is true (or should be true).
The "Big Lie" model works, but not without limits. People are smart enough to know an obvious propaganda campaign when they see one. However, they are vulnerable to the distributed effect of memetic reinforcement. Expect the average person to do a minor fact-checking spree when he is challenged to believe something new. He will ask a friend or two, do an Internet search, and maybe leaf through a book. However, if all the sources he bothers to check are those that either agree with you or don't know, you own him, especially if his sources actually reinforce your propaganda. The key is acquiring a monopoly on initial sources. If all the "first places people look" for answers are places you control, it doesn't matter whether there is more detailed stuff biased against you. That's why it's dangerous to have an imbalance of bias in places of education and in repositories of general knowledge.
3. When timing is essential, a little misdirection will get you all the time you need.
And people are surprisingly adept at generating their own misdirections. What do people do when faced with the choice of: One--handling something and being accused of insensitivity or some similar inane pseudo-crime, or two--finding an excuse to do something easier?

So, to sum up, it's surprising what you can get away with when the people who might catch you are entangled in bureaucracies, it's surprising what people can be convinced to believe if you just keep the controversy away from them until they have formed a habit of believing you, and it's surprising what people will ignore if you make the repercussions of paying attention a little difficult.
Real conspiracies
9/11 attacks: Worked because the bureaucratic agencies responsible for handling anything that might have tipped us off were predictably deficient. And because leftist sensibilities are sufficiently ingrained in American society that the notion of any kind of prejudice is unthinkable.
Socialism: Worked because through the ACLU the socialists took control of the education system, and made actual conspiracy unnecessary. Advancing socialist causes is natural for those who are processed through the public school system. The "socialist conspiracy" is perpetuated by normal people passing around their memes.
JFK assassination: I might be a little kooky on this one, but I think Lee Harvey Oswald probably made only one of the shots on the President, and was meant to be the fall guy. Misdirection. One guy who helped is set up to appear to be the sole perpetrator, which people believe because they think an alternative is too complicated, when really in this case it isn't unrealistic.

Atwar Bahjat Murdered

2006-05-07T13:35:00.000-04:00

The Killing of Atwar Bahjat

Hat tip to the Rottweiler

A woman believed to be Iraqi journalist Atwar Bahjat was brutally tortured with an electric drill, and then slowly decapitated. The murderers in this case were, ~~Buddhist~~ ~~Christian~~ ~~Jewish~~ Muslim supremacists. What a suprise.

Note: Apparently this is a 'hoax'. The video is of a Nepalese man killed about a year and a half ago. However, Atwar Bahjat is still actually dead, and she was killed by Muslim supremacists.

Dan Rather Blog?

2006-04-30T23:44:00.000-04:00

A Precision Guided Humor Assignment

If Dan Rather had a blog, what would it be about?

Well, a picture is worth a thousand words.
Derived from the following blogs:
IMAO (most of the imaginary blog design)
Little Green Footballs (football in the logo and owner Charles Johnson, subject of imaginary Dan's blog)

Digital Copyrights could become a bigger pain in the tukhus.

2006-04-24T18:32:00.000-04:00

Article: Congress Seeks to Expand DMCA

(Hat tip: LGF)

My original LGF comment

Digital copyright protection is one of those wonderful topics that get people yelling at each other. The entertainment and software industrial complex are the major victims of copyright infringement, because that's what people download and pirate -- Movies, music, TV series, video games, and applications intended for serious productivity. I will not dispute the fact that software piracy is essentally theft, and that it's wrong. That's not my point today.

My point has nothing to do with the ethics of software piracy. Rather, I simply wish to state the fact that it is insane to believe that one can continue to make money from a product by trying to control the distribution of that product, when current technology makes it possible for anyone to make dozens of perfect copies with minimal effort.

Ultimately, attempts to criminalize copyright infringement with steeper penalties, to create more and increasingly pernicious protection mechanisms -- are an exercise in futility as far as actually stopping the practice of copyright infringement. All they're doing is putting temporary stumbling blocks in the paths of the hackers and making life more unnecessarily tedious for the rest of us. If the big names in the entertainment and software industries do not give up on this, and we don't stop them, it will bring about the age of technofeudalism.

Technofeudalism is a resurrection of the medieval feudal economic model, except that the peasant class now includes people of all levels of wealth, lording over which are the companies that control the software and entertainment we use. It is a world where our productivity is governed by proprietary formats, and software is no longer purchased but subscribed to. It is a world where there is freedom in the physical world, but cyberspace is a realm of serfs and vassals. Whether or not this can be avoided depends on whether or not our needs can be fulfilled by people operating on different business plans. And incidentally, this smells like a good sci-fi story in the making.

Anyway, to sum up, a business model that depends on controlling the distribution of the product will be no good in years to come.

In my prophetic opinion, a comparatively better business plan in years to come will be a release-focused profit model (similar to the 'patronage model' and more or less the same as the 'ransom method' except with a prettier name) In fact, you can mark this down as an Ultimate Solution™ to the digital piracy problem.

Announce your product, provide a demo/teaser for free, declare that the real thing won't be released until you receive a certain amount of money, and when you do release it, go ahead and release it for free download, accepting the fact that people are going to propagate copies amongst each other anyway.

There is much to be appreciated from this. First, it focuses the money-making on something the developer is able to control--initial release. You do not even attempt to control distribution. Second, it favors continued productivity, rather than making one thing and expecting to milk it for the rest of your life.

It would be adapted easily to most enterprises that are affected by copyright infringement. Software of just about any kind-- no problem. TV series... no problem.
Music will be a little different though. Teasers aren't feasible for that, so musicians will have to release a greater proportion of their recorded work before they can expect to convince people that the rest of their stuff is worth holding for ransom, and they will have to make the majority of their money from live performances.
The movie business would be significantly altered by this model. Theaters would have to work a lot differently.

There are, of course, some details that would have to be worked out, like how people would get their money back from canceled projects and how much time people should expect to wait before the product is delivered, but these are relatively minor details.

A new Press Secretary.

2006-04-20T17:35:00.000-04:00

With all the names being thrown around for possible replacements for Scott McClellan, the White House Press Secretary who is resigning, there is one name that should be considered very seriously: Kim du Toit.

He lists his exemplary qualifications here.

Happy Hitler Day!

2006-04-20T16:29:00.000-04:00

It's 4/20, which is Hitler's birthday, the anniversary of the Columbine shootings, and the Oklahoma city bombing. No better memorial could be given to these acts than to make sure that this kind of crap doesn't happen again.

If you run an art school, check your applicants to see if they have blogs with disturbing politics on them. And let them in if they do. Their art will be interesting, and at least they won't be killing people.

If you run the sort of place that sells ammonium nitrate fertilizer, get to know your customers. If a first-time buyer doesn't have a farm and is buying a lot of fertilizer, there might be a serious problem.

If your head of state is calling for the extermination of the Jews, please assassinate him.

If your kids are going to a public school, pull them out. The vast majority of kids survive it with only a modicum of emotional scarring. However, even though the chance that they'll be driven to a homicidal frenzy is very small, it's not a chance you should take.

And of course, many of these outrages can happen on short notice, which is part of why massive civilian gun ownership is so important.

Amnesty International: Masters of Moral Equivalency

2006-04-20T14:54:00.000-04:00

There is nothing quite as indulgent for an international news reporter as finding an excuse to equate the United States with places like China, Iran, and Vietnam.
BBC News carried this Amnesty International press release, which wailed about the number of countries in the world that still use the death penalty.

However, Secretary-General Irene Khan said in a statement that the death penalty remained the "ultimate, irreversible denial of human rights".
It contravened the "essence of human values", and was often applied in a discriminatory manner, followed unfair trials or was applied for political reasons, she said.

It is with the utmost gravity that I must report that Secretary-General Irene Khan is an idiot. It can hardly be called an ultimate irreversible denial of human rights to kill someone for egregiously pretending that said rights don't exist. If anything, the proper use of the death penalty protects human rights.

The concept of human rights ends in a dead end if you take the position that everybody always has them, and cannot do anything to forfeit them. In order for it to work, you have to understand that the moment you violate a particular right for someone else, you suspend it for yourself until amends are made. If you don't understand this, then you are essentially excusing criminals for their actions by refusing to stop them.

For first-degree murder or multiple cases of other degrees of murder, the death penalty is entirely appropriate. It is the only punishment that fully answers the crime, and an excellent safeguard against that person commiting such crimes again.

Okay, let's assume that you're one of those people who says the death penalty would be fine if it could be applied fairly with protections against political, racial, or any other kind of unfair discrimination. It sounds very much like you want to eliminate the human factor completely from the sentencing process. Because people are biased, people can't be involved, right? All death sentences would be decided through an omniscient Flowchart that lays out which circumstances lead to death. That Flowchart would have to be made publicly available, and you know what happens then? A multitude of special interest groups will jump onto the Flowchart like a pack of wolves, and push for amendments to the Flowchart until it is more convoluted than a public school district's protocol for firing teachers with tenure. Before long you'll be desperately begging to go back to the days of yore, when it was pretty much up to the jury.

Just to make it clear, I support the death penalty in the following cases:
First degree murder
Multiple or repeated counts of other degrees of murder
Child molestation
Multiple or repeated counts of rape

And of course, I support the unrestricted proliferation of firearms and the use of deadly force in the defense of self or others, which would make a host of lesser crimes potentially life threatening to criminals.

But you in Europe, with your pathetically backward and primitive understanding of human rights, protect the enemies of civilization and sow the seeds of your own destruction. Do you want to live or not?

I propose this Constitutional amendment.

2006-04-16T02:17:00.000-04:00

The sum total of all taxes required to be paid by each individual person shall not exceed ten percent of that person's income.

---

Why ten percent? Well, I think an upper limit on taxes is a good idea. And it shouldn't be very high. So ten percent seemed like a good number. I figure that asking for more money than God is probably blasphemy anyway.

A Precision Guided Humor Assignment: Solving the WMD Trailer Mystery

2006-04-13T23:48:00.000-04:00

Just what were they really making in those Winnebagos of Death?

Reinvention

2006-04-13T19:25:00.000-04:00

This is the George, formerly of georgeguy.blogspot.com (now defunct). I deleted my old blog in a fit of rage directed at Google (They being the owners of Blogger/Blogspot). I later decided that would be silly and achieve nothing. At one time I had a fabulous idea to monitor the Daily Kos and respond to all the most outrageous postings there, hoping that Kos would take notice of me, call me an idiot, and alert the rest of his enemies to my existence so that they could all unite under my banner.

Delusions of grandeur, they were. A reason I canceled my blog was because I thought that blogging had eaten into my work on my webcomic, Thinginess of Chaos, and I was simply trying to do too many things at once--and something had to go. But I realize now that my ideas are just too important to keep to myself. You see, delusions of grandeur are important, because sometimes they become self-fulfilling and are no longer delusions. Imagined greatness can be the first step to real greatness.

If I had given up on blogging I would have ended up trying to deliver all my important messages through my comic and I'd just end up messing things up. That wouldn't be fair. So instead, I bring you my new blog.

Why this title? I don't know, it seemed cool. That's honestly why I chose it. Some may think it blasphemous to call oneself a prophet. Here are the first four definitions of "Prophet" from the American Heritage Dictionary:

A person who speaks by divine inspiration or as the interpreter through whom the will of a god is expressed.
A person gifted with profound moral insight and exceptional powers of expression.
A predictor; a soothsayer.
The chief spokesperson of a movement or cause.

Number 1 is the definition most theologically-minded people think of-- a prophet is someone who speaks on God's behalf. I can't say I've received any grand visions. I don't know for sure if God is actually telling me to say anything. I do know that something is driving me to speak when I see a new crisis on the news, and since I haven't ruled out God yet, I'm going to give myself the benefit of the doubt and say I am a prophet.
Number 2 is easy. Do I have profound moral insight and exceptional powers of expression? Well, I don't have a criminal record so the first bit is certainly possible, and I have been praised as a good writer before, so the latter bit is definitely true.
Number 3 is also simple. Much of predicting the future is simply a matter of knowing human behavior and calculating the future impact of present decisions. I can't say I've received direct divine revelation of the future, but I have paid a little bit of attention to history.
Number 4 is easy too, but I have to say what neofederalism is now, which is the relevant movement. Essentially it's a variation of New Federalism, which was actually one of Nixon's things. There are New Federalist movements which I can't claim to be the chief spokesperson. The main goal of neofederalism is to attempt to bring as much government as possible back to the most local level possible, so that people in California are no longer afforded the ability to vote for laws that Pennsylvania, that voters in Philadelphia are no longer able to wield power over the residents of Lewistown. That would be a huge accomplishment in itself. And of course, it is also an attempt to bring American neoconservative philosophy full circle, back to our foundational roots.

There will be real content upcoming, and cartoons.