Misc. - the Useful Abbreviation

One has to love the ability to type “misc.” instead of miscellaneous(which is only correctly spelled here due to Windows Live Writer’s spellchecker).  It is such a useful term too – it covers everything!

Yes, I’m making an excuse to post random unconnected links to stories interesting me today:

Read about stocks jumping to new highs on Yahoo and once reading the reasons for it felt vindicated in thinking the “recovery” is all about banks and the political class – not the peons.  They love the dollar collapsing; such wonderful patriots they are.  They also love blowing bubbles and we are going to see more pop with this irresponsible behavior.  People invested in stocks don’t care about anything but reaping a quick profit and that cannot bring about any long term improvement.

Twenty years ago, the Berlin Wall fell and the end of Communism in Europe had begun. Lech Walesa played a critical role in this and the former leader of Solidarity says some interesting things in an interview with Spiegal Online. His warning to the politicians is one that should be heeded.

At PajamasTV, Bob Owens has a nice rant only a gun nut will appreciate – so of course I enjoyed it a great deal.  It has to do with the “cop killer” label put on the FN Five-seveN (oy, the marketing gimmick) 5.7mm pistol in the reports on the Fort Hood shootings.  This is a pistol I would love to own as I’m a fan of velocity over mass, but Owens’ arguments are sound and I have a heavier caliber pistol for the same reasons.  I’m grateful Hasan fell for the hype, things could have been far worse.

People scoff at computer virus threats while disregarding the legitimate threat.  Frankly, the chance that your PC could be given a virus that downloads child pornography is frightening.  So if anyone reading this doesn’t have a firewall and antivirus program on their PC, please install one pronto!  Being framed for something as depraved as this should be motive enough to add some security.

Terrorism and Fort Hood

UPDATED

The media reaction to Nidal Malik Hasan’s attack on his fellow troops in Fort Hood has been disturbing to me.  Political correctness is acting like a lens distorting reality the way a funhouse mirror warps a reflection. As more facts emerge about Hasan, it is clear he was a jihadi. Someone just snapping from stress by proxy (what a ludicrous excuse) doesn’t try to contact al Qaeda months before shooting a bunch of American soldiers.  He doesn’t give away his belongings first and he doesn’t frequent strip joints like the 9/11 hijackers did.  Hasan did exactly that.


Many Islamic fundamentalists believe all your sins are forgiven on martyrdom, so they tend to party in forbidden ways.  That looks hypocritical to Western eyes, but it simply points out one of our cultural differences with the Islamic world.  Over at Forbes, Tunku Varadarajan has a must read piece on our problems facing what he dubs “going Muslim.”

UPDATED:
CNN proves the distorted lens by rearranging a wounded soldier's quote to make it look like he was unsure if Hasan yelled "Allhu akbar." Mudville Gazette has the details.

It isn’t like Hasan was the first to go on a killing spree in the name of Islam after 9/11. Next week on Tuesday the “D.C. Sniper” will be executed.  Seven years ago, John Allen Muhammad and his accomplice Lee Malvo  killed 10 people. Do people even remember this?  I wonder.

A big part of the problem is how the political left and their lapdogs in the media have depicted the war on terror.  J.R. Dunn at The American Thinker puts it better than I can.  I agree with him that relativism has done a great deal of damage:  allowing corruption to flourish and weakening our will to defend ourselves. Everything depends on the American people waking up.

I question whether another 9/11 would be enough.

Weekend Links: Around the World

The Nuclear Threat

The UN is wondering why they’ve found evidence that the Iranians have experimented with a radically more advanced nuclear warhead design than previously thought.  It is pretty clear they are playing for time to get weapons in production and the weak Obama administration is making it easier than ever. Not that President Bush was much better in dealing with them.  It will be up to Israel to defend themselves. There will be fallout one day, probably of the radioactive kind.

Over in Poland, nuclear fears are rising as well.  Russia practiced an invasion and nuclear missile strike on Poland back in September.  They even gamed out a pretext based on ethnic Poles rising up in Belarus.  Nothing is subtle with the Russians and this is clearly a threat being made to Poland. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a repeat of the false flag operation used by the Nazis to justify invading Poland.  A weak US president make previously unthinkable objectives possible, unfortunately.

Rising Up Against Oppression

Over at Gateway Pundit, a collection of reports on continuing protests in Iran against their rulers.  This should have been bigger news, but the media isn’t interested in the story. Iran is not a stable country and that should be of concern to everyone. We need to be on the right side of this if things are to be kept from blowing up in the Middle East.  Sucking up to dictators in hopes they will become accommodating doesn’t work.

Call of Duty Set to Overwhelm the Gaming World

I have to say Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was a brilliant and disturbing video game.  Brilliant in execution and disturbing in plausibility, it put the player in the midst of an international crisis involving a nightmarish scenario of nukes, Russian civil war, and Middle East fundamentalism.  So it is no surprise the sequel is eagerly awaited, but the sales expectations of half a billion dollars worldwide in the first week is a shock.

I don’t play multiplayer so I can’t comment on the latter half of the article.  Still, if the single player experience is as good as the first one, I’ll get Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 -- when it gets very cheap.  It means a wait of several years, but I can afford to be patient. I literally can’t afford impatience in these cash strapped times.

Political Shenanigans

With Cap & Trade and ObamaCare unpopular with the voters, a lot of games are being played to ram them through before the recess.  Pelosi & Reid can’t afford to have Democrats go home and face their constituents before voting on the bills as they might get swayed to vote “No.”

One thing they don’t want out is the penalty for not buying mandatory health care under the House version of the health care bill.  It is freaking totalitarian, that’s all.

The campaign to neuter Fox News is still underway at the White House.  This has been denied, but with the previous actions by the Obama administration I think it is legit. They are determined to control the news at all costs, but I think they are making a huge mistake.  This kind of thing wouldn’t be leaked if it weren’t seriously resented.  The Chicago way is as blunt and heavy handed as the Russians actions in Eastern Europe. Totalitarians never tolerate criticism or the truth well.

Governing the Internet

Intellectual property rights are all the rage in governance right now.  Having been pushed by media conglomerates for some time now as their faltering products fail to earn enough moola, governments are moving to halt piracy of music on the Net.  The latest attempt is a stealth move under the guise of an anti-counterfeiting trade agreement (ACTA).  Basically, the idea is to force the internet service providers (ISP’s) to be held responsible when someone downloads an illegal copy of a tune or movie.  Before this the individual was held responsible and the ISP’s were immune to prosecution. 

Why is this a bad thing?  Well, the US government hid the details of what is in the treaty and the countries that actually counterfeit music and movies aren’t involved in the treaty.  So it does nothing about counterfeiting and is all about snooping into the contents of people’s computers.  The ISP’s will have to do that to keep from being sued. That’s a big civil rights issue and once the ability to do that is granted, it won’t go away and will be abused.

IP rights are okay for a limited time, I personally believe 15 years is good enough with an exception made on religious materials.  If people aren’t allowed to rest on their laurels, it will encourage them to come up with new material.  I’m a big fan of intellectual ferment and the marketplace of ideas, so limiting IP to a shorter span would be a true stimulus of creativity.  Right now it feels like the whole world is going through the motions and repeating itself.  Be nice to break free of that stagnation, wouldn’t it?

The secrecy involved is the real deal breaker.  They wouldn’t be secretive unless they were up to something illegal.  Though what is legal is becoming more of a “we say so” kind of thing rather than true application of jurisprudence.  I think we are seeing the money out of Hollywood and the music industry behind all this as they are losing money due to inferior products.  They won’t admit this and have to blame something for their failure. However, the consequences of this push may much bigger than they understand.

Weekend Links: The Economy

It was quite a week for developments on the economic front.  I wish I could report it was good news.
First off, official unemployment hit 10.2% after October’s figures came in.  This indicates things are getting worse for the American worker – not better. Ed Morrisey at Hot Air has an excellent post on it including an updated Romer graph of what the stimulus promised to do versus what actually happened.  We are off the chart now.  Also from Ed is a post with links of what jobs were really saved by the stimulus, starting with California.  Hint: the state & federal governments aren’t honest.
Doesn’t get much more pointed than what India’s finance minister said when their central bank bought 200 tons of gold in order to reduce dollar holdings.  What did he say about the economies of Europe and the US?  That they had “collapsed.”  Asian countries are running from the US dollar now.
Makes the wrangling over how much to increase health care look silly if there won’t be any money at all.  Still, the Republican health care plan was rolled out Wednesday after having the CBO (Congressional Budget Office) go over the figures.  It would actually reduce the deficit by $68 million over a ten year span.  Sounds good compared to the trillion dollar increase in debt from ObamaCare.  Still, how will any of it be paid for? There is no answer on that, because there is no way to!

UPDATE:  I was wrong, the Democrats plan isn't a trillion dollar outlay, but $3,000,000,000,000 plus over 10 years according to the CBO! The Heritage foundation estimate comes in at $2.4 to 2.6 trillion.  This is insane.

The Fort Hood Shootings

UPDATED: 

Hasan may be linked to the 9/11 hijackers.  The Telegraph has more on his connections including worshiping at the same mosque in Virginia at the time they attended. Simply incredible that he was kept in the military. Once again, why do I find these things in foreign papers first?


Now that it is days later, we have a more complete picture of what happened.  The shooter is a devout Muslim psychiatrist that was under suspicion of posting pro-jihadi statements online six months ago.  Major Nidal Malik Hasan was about to be deployed to Iraq Afghanistan and had gotten bad reviews in his evaluations.  Hasan is American born of Palestinian parents and believed the war on terror was a war against Muslims.  He refused to have his picture taken with women. He was devout, attended a mosque – yet claimed no religion or preference in his military records. He shouted “Allahu Akbar!” before firing two handguns into a crowded room. We also know he gave away many of his belongings, something that a jihadist does before preparing for martyrdom.

So the media is spinning it as some kind of combat stress by proxy, since he has never served overseas. The media concern is over how Muslims will be treated over this, more so than the plight of the real victims.  Funny how we are always being accused of persecuting Muslims when something like this happens.  This suggest we behave otherwise, hat tip to Instapundit. *sigh* Reality has become optional in today’s age.
I’m wondering if this is a watershed moment, where it becomes very clear there are two America’s: one bent on political correctness unto insanity and the other that see’s what is really going on but feels completely muzzled by the former.

It isn’t like this is an isolated incident, we had a Muslim shooter in Utah last year, there was the black Muslim convert who fragged his squad mates in Iraq years ago, a conspiracy to attack Fort Dix, and we are beginning to see honor killings in the United States.  What we are seeing is a clash of cultures that aren’t very compatible, if at all. Ignoring that or spinning it as something else isn’t going to make the problem go away.  Individual jihadists are still jihadists.

Meanwhile, we take casualties here at home.  The soldiers were unarmed and felt far from combat when Hasan attacked them.  Because he was supposedly one of them and it happened here, they feel betrayed and violated.  We all should as this man should not have been in the military.  With his record he should have been booted out as a security risk, but PC rules all in governing now.

The soldiers who died and were wounded came from all over the country, so this truly is a national tragedy.  What makes tragedies tragic is that they are preventable and are based on the flaws of people. In this case, the many flaws of Hasan were apparent for some time. If he ever gets wakes up and comes off the ventilator keeping him alive, I predict a media circus as more facts come out – fact that won’t fit their narrative. Though I wonder if they even have a clue about what is real anymore.

President Obama’s performance still rankles me, made worse by that idiotic “shout out” attributed a Medal of Honor to a man who doesn’t have one.  There is no excuse in not knowing the difference between it and the Medal of Freedom, just as there is none for the levity shown beginning the speech. The superficiality is simply amazing with this man.  There is no question in my mind that we are less secure with him at the helm.

Mass Shooting at Fort Hood

Horrible day in Texas,  12 dead and 31 wounded by at least one other soldier.  The shooter was killed, but there are eye witness reports of a second shooter who is in custody with a third as possible accomplices. The FBI has been brought in to assist in finding out the motivations.  Fort Hood is under lock down. Please pray for all involved.

As jarring as that was, President Obama coming out to address an Interior Department conference waited minutes before speaking about it, doing pump up motivational material for the attendees -- even going as far as giving a “shout out” to one the people in the audience!  Reprehensible and disrespectful, the shootings should have been brought up immediately.  From there he rambled as he does without a teleprompter.  The man is an embarrassment to the country and to his office.