Durbin Apologises

Dick Durbin has peered into the political abyss and decided to sort of apologise to those who "may have believed" that his remarks comparing US soldiers to Nazis or the Khmer Rouge "crossed the line". American politicians can smell death better than vultures can. The mayor of Chicago caught a good whiff coming off Durbin and helped push Senator Dick over the edge. Public tears AND insulting the military, better not quit your day job, Dicko.

Sully

I went over to visit Sully today for the first time in a long while. Are there two people writing that blog? Has the boyfriend or the beagle taken over half his brain? He wants to the right thing, you can tell he does. But somehow the demon left that lives in the back of his mind keeps doing a Linda Blair on him.

We shouldn't give up on him yet. Maybe a "Save Sully" day?

Gitmo Hazing

The NRO'sRich Lowry has a good take-down on the close Gitmo crowd. As Rich puts it:
"Time this week reports on an extreme Gitmo case, that of the suspected 20th hijacker who was captured at the battle of Tora Bora. He was subjected to special interrogation methods briefly approved, then revoked, by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Among other things, he was deprived of sleep. He was forced to watch a puppet show satirizing his involvement with al Qaeda and made to stand for the national anthem. A female interrogator invaded his personal space. He was made briefly to stand naked and occasionally told to bark like a dog. This was as bad as it got at Gitmo."

I don't know about you, but my fraternity hazing was a lot worse than that.

Eurostupidity-the ticket tax.

This little scheme ccoked up by those financial geniuses in Eutopia shows that there really is no limit to Franco-German greed and stupidity. Having taxed their own economies into the dirt, they've now cooked up an idea to tax everybody and give the money to "the poor". Are they going to give up some of their farm subsidies? Mais non! It's a tax on airline tickets, just a "few pence" mind you, with the proceeds distributed by...by whom? Some new and enormous Eurocracy headed by an unemployed French bureaucrat no doubt. The UN floated this idea this back in the 80's to fund itself and was told to piss off by the United States.

I'll wager that Nanny thinks this is a great idea. You heard it here first.

The Wheels of Justice Slowly Grind

The first witnesses in the Bank of Commerce and Credit International collapse case will be heard, 10 years after the fact. Can you remember what kind of paperwork you signed at the office or anything about those interminable management meetings 10 years ago. Unless you're terminally anal, there's at least a 50/50 chance that you were taking a nap, doodling, recovering from or planning a long lunch, or making a personal phone call at any given moment on any given working day.

Now some bewigged person will ask you, "Is it true that at the meeting of the subcommittee on policy planning for derivative hedge trading held on April 9, 1995, you spoke in favor of using Rule 36(b)12 of Subsection 42(A) to use losses on the bank's zloty/rupiah cross interest rate trades to offset profits in the rubidium futures room?. Before you answer, let me remind you that of the penalties for perjury........."

ACT Does Something Right

Probably unintentionally, the ACT caucus has done something right. By not getting John Banks onto their list (probably because Banksie rightly saw ACT's ideological rigidity as a handicap), they leave the the way open for Bank' to unseat Dick "Tear Down This Wall" Hubbard.

Meanwhile the Nats are working as hard they can to throw away the budget poll bounce. Just announce some some freaking tax cuts will you? The longer you wait, the longer Nanny has to spin this away.

More From The Peanut Section

Well, we've gotten Anonymous' attention again. The infamous B.Shuai (whom you'll recall as a notorious scribbler from the blue end of the decidedly non-mainstream media organ The Non-Union News has taken us to task for, well I'm still sorting through the meandering bloviations, but it seems to have something to do with politics.

The mind behind the NUN says:

"The minds of "conservatives" are truly novel, even precious things. Addicted to an extreme regime of "reductio ad absurdam", convinced that the particular historical dispensation that prevails this year, or this decade (or even this century) is proof enough of America's trans-historical ascendency and triumph, they hold forth on all manner of topics of which they know little and understand less."

First, I didn't say anything at all about America, but about a shared heritage that, where ever it is tended, produces a greater degree of dignity, freedom and prosperity than anything else mankind has devised. Further, where ever the tenets of this heritage are ignored or abandoned, we see poverty, humilitaion and enslavement. The examples are legion and the counter examples are rarer than a Republican in San Francisco. Even the Islamofascists are able to lash out only to the extent that they adopt, hijack, exploit or pervert western technology (cell phones, airplanes, plastic explosives, credit cards) or Western society (open society, political correctness, freedom of travel, free speech). The failures of the Western societies that adopted Marxism and other structuralisms show as clearly as the space between Shuai's ears that when a state abandons democracy, the rule of law, free markets and the scientific method, then it embarks on quick downhill run to stagnation and irrelevance. The United States has no historical dispensation and is no more exception to that principle than is Burma or Egypt. I never said otherwise, nor would any true conservative.

Next, the good editor says:

"Could it be that distance makes the mind grow sharper? That no longer having to live with the consequences of the Israelification and militarization of not only American foreign policy but also American political culture and even common sense, these worthies imagine that being so distant they may urge the moral troglodytes at the helm of this tragically misdirected republic forward to auto-toxemic oblivion with their usual antipodal abandon, remaining safe from any consequence?"

I think he means it's easy for me to talk, living as I do here in Godzone. That's particularly rich coming from someone who works in academia and lives in the most left-leaning city of the most left-leaning state in the union. I'll wager a substantial bar-tab that Brother Shuai regularly goes weeks without encountering anyone who disagrees with his political views.

Finally, OK. let's assume for the sake of argument that I'm wrong. Now what, Jack?


A Reminder

Let's step back for a minute and remind ourselves just why we're here and just why a lot of hard men are standing the night watch for us in some dark and dangerous places.

1. We are not at war with terrorism. We are at war with radical Islam, which is an ideology not a religion.
2. The Islamofascist ideology seeks global domination and global theocracy. It has no other agenda than the destruction of western civilization. It cannot be negotiated with or appeased. Don't take my word for it, ask bin-Laden yourself. Islamic fundamentalism must be rooted out and destroyed.
2. Western Civilization is a uniquely valuable human development. As such it is worth fighting for. The multi-cultural propaganda not withstanding, it is Western Civilization that has been the key to such freedom, dignity,prosperity and progress as we have. Other cultures have become rich and free to the precise degree that they have adopted the key elements of Western Civilization: democracy, free markets, the rule of law and the scientific method.

Go ahead give a counter-example, I'll wait, and wait, and wait.

Aren't We Precious?

According to this story a Koran at Guantanamo was kicked, yes kicked by a soldier. Another was splashed with urine that "came through an air vent." Sounds like somebody really needed to pee. Somebody ring Amnesty International. If it's not stopped this could progress on to other Gulag type outrages. What's next? dogeared pages, creased spines, coffee cup rings, marginalia? Will the Koran be used as a paperweight? Will it be shelved out of place? Will Post-it notes be stuck to its pages and forgotten? My God, where will it end?

al-Qaeda's Child Army

This report from ABC that al-Qaeda are press-ganging children as young as 10 into service shows us two things..it's impossible to overstate the savagery and barbarism of the Islamofascist and they're running out of adults. The sooner these people are wiped from the face of the planet and their odious ideology buried with Nazism and Communism the better for all of us.

I Really Like This

Silent Running has a great slap-down of the cotton wool brigade.

Not So Deep Throat

OK, everybody not connected with the MSM is asking whether Mark Felt was a hero. I think a hero, recognising how odious Nixon was, would have resigned, gone public and taken the heat for it. Felt's actions were no different than those of every contemporary whinger who loses a policy debate and takes the fight to the media rather than risk the pension.

Blowback in Europe

Good sense prevails in the unlikeliest of places. First the French, now the Dutch. This is blowback from the EU bureaucracy's arrogance and overreach. The mainstream media keeps leading the story with the line that "Nine other countries have ratified the EU Constitution". No, nine other parliaments have ratified because their governments feared exactly this outcome if it were put to a referendum. In a classic "Emperor is naked" moment, the EU is revealed as an elite enterprise, as breathtaking in its arrogance and in its contempt for democracy as NZ Labour. Let us hope they both pay the price.

Goodbye agriculture.

Let's hope that Nanny can step back from her narrow political interests long enough to think very carefully about what she's about to give away to the Chinese. I've seen this before. The Chinese will push for a deal requiring the transfer of agricultural technology with promises of liberalization for agricultural products somewhere down the road. NZ will sell the crown jewels for an immediate, and no doubt substantial, profit. Ten years from now, we'll be buying Chinese milk powder and all our Asian markets for fresh agricutural produce will be gone as well.

You heard it here first.