Abdullah Mehsud, Guantanamo Bay Class of ’04, takes the chicken’s way out.
Another real man.
Ever again
Posted by Ron Coleman on July 23, 2007
James Taranto (and others) got exercised last week over the fact that Barack Obama won’t get exercised over genocide.
It’s a nice political point to score on him, but give him points for honesty. “Never again” is the Big Lie of the second half of the twentieth century. Tonight, on the eve of the 65th anniversary of the deportation of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka, we must be honest: If we knew then what we know now, about the mass killings, the gas chambers, the sick human experimentation, the crematoria — if we knew it were going on right now …
America, and the rest of the world, would not do a damned thing about it.
Indeed, as the official position of the left, including its handmaiden the mainstream press, becomes “we would not have agreed to fight in Iraq if Bush had not lied to us about weapons of mass destruction” — however absurd a lie that is; and this is combined with the turning away from events in Darfur, and elsewhere; and it is combined, too, with the essential silence of the “world community” in the face of genocide and mass murder, especially of the despised — the niggers of the world, whether black and Jew or even, if the politics of it is right, Arab — the horrible truth becomes ever more clear:
“We” simply do not care.
Posted in Past is prologue | 56 Comments »
Eve of Destruction
Posted by Ron Coleman on July 23, 2007
Jewish tradition teaches that on Tisha B’Av (the Ninth day of the month of Av) , five national calamities occurred:
- During the time of Moses, Jews in the desert accepted the slanderous report of the ten spies, and the decree was issued by God forbidding them from entering the Land of Israel. (1312 BCE — traditional Jewish dating)
- The First Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians, led by Nebuchadnezzar. 100,000 Jews were slaughtered and millions more exiled. (586 BCE)
- The Second Temple was destroyed by the Romans, led by Titus. Traditional sourcest teach that two million Jews died, and another one million were exiled. (70 CE)
- The Bar Kochba revolt was crushed by Roman Emperor Hadrian. The city of Betar — the Jews’ last stand against the Romans — was captured and liquidated. Over 100,000 Jews were slaughtered. (135 CE)
- The Temple area and its surroundings were plowed under by the Roman general Terentius Rufus. Jerusalem was rebuilt as a pagan city — renamed Aelia Capitolina — and access was forbidden to Jews.
Other grave misfortunes throughout Jewish history occurred on the Ninth of Av, including:
- The Spanish Inquisition culminated with the expulsion of Jews from Spain on Tisha B’Av in 1492.
- World War One broke out on the eve of Tisha B’Av in 1914 when Germany declared war on Russia. German resentment from the war set the stage for the Holocaust.
- On the eve of Tisha B’Av 1942, the mass deportation began of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto, en route to Treblinka.
More on the Ninth of Av, which begins tonight. Observant Jews will fast (a complete fast — no food, no water) until nightful Tuesday night. For us, this is the “hardest” day of the year.
Posted in Faith and Works, Orient, Past is prologue | Leave a Comment »
Monkeyfishing in Iraq?
Posted by Ron Coleman on July 23, 2007
It’s looking that way, isn’t it? (Link here for the “inside” reference.)
When they stoop to this, how much better than what we even thought must the real truth be?
UPDATE: They’re circling the wagons.
UPPERDATE: The monkeyfisherman emerges.
Posted in Medialites, Orient | Leave a Comment »
Bring ’em home!
Posted by Ron Coleman on July 22, 2007
Harvey at IMAO brings the perspective of the reality-based community home:
During New York’s Wednesday rush hour, a steam pipe exploded, killing one person and injuring 44.Incidents such as this make it obvious that the only sensible course of action is to withdraw from America’s insane War on Steam.
But who will listen?
Posted in Jocularity | Leave a Comment »
“Reasonable degree of professional certainty”
Posted by Ron Coleman on July 21, 2007
Walter Olson, at Point of Law (link added for non-lawyers):
Those who follow the Daubert/scientific evidence wars will want to catch the back-and-forth between Beck and Herrmann and Peter Nordberg on the question of whether expert witnesses should be required to testify to a “reasonable degree of professional certainty” as to their conclusions.
See Walter’s post for the links. Now, I haven’t been following it all that closely, except as a lawyer who does trials, but I find this an odd position for conservatives to take. I supposed one’s positions can come ’round and bite you aft when the world is so complex. But since when is “professional certainty” — especially in the era of political correctness in the academy across disciplines — a gold standard? When Al Gore and the New York Times say “there’s a scientific consensus on global warming,” which objectively speaking there largely is, is that not a “reasonable degree of professional certainty” that may still, nonetheless, be scientifically suspect?
Professional “truth” is a negotiable virtue in science as everywhere else. Homosexuality was once a psychiatric disorder; now considering it abnormal is. Did science change, or merely scientists?
“Reasonable degree of scientific certainty”? We all hate litigation abuse, but I’m not ready to throw the adversarial system out with the bath water.
Posted in Lex scripta, Stragety | Leave a Comment »
The invisible wand
Posted by Ron Coleman on July 21, 2007
Megan McArdle asks the questions that many of us — especially the economics majors among us — have been nursing for years:
The low opportunity cost attached to magic spills over into the thoroughly unbelievable wizard economy. Why are the Weasleys poor? Why would any wizard be? Anything they need, except scarce magical objects, can be obtained by ordering a house elf to do it, or casting a spell, or, in a pinch, making objects like dinner, or a house, assemble themselves. Yet the Weasleys are poor not just by wizard standards, but by ours: they lack things like new clothes and textbooks that should be easily obtainable with a few magic words. Why?The answer, as with so much of JK Rowling’s work, seems to be “she didn’t think it through”. . . .
To the extent that there is any system at all, it is the meanest sort of Victoriana, the fantasy world of a child Herbert Spencer. There is a hereditary aristocracy of talent, and I am secretly at its apex. There is an elite school almost nobody can go to, and I am one of the chosen. People fall quite neatly into the categories of good, bad, or clueless, we are the good ones who get to run things in the end. That’s powerful fantasy stuff, which is why it’s so common.
But the best children’s fantasy does something else: it gives one the illusion that the magical world is as consistent and real as one’s own world – that it exists, just barely out of reach. Even at eight, or 11, I could not have believed that of Harry Potter. The arbitrary ham fist of Ms Rowling is everywhere too evident – changing the rules, and then making the characters tap dance, like marionettes, to distract you from the enormous potholes in the plot.
(Via IP.) She’s right about this. And yet I do not think that this distracts from Rowling’s remarkable accomplishment — not only economic (but yeah, that too! yeah, remarkable!). Yes, there are holes in the plots, illogic, though to some extent these are questions you can always ask about “magic powers” fantasies. Why couldn’t Jeannie from “I Dream of Jeannie” or Samantha of “Bewitched” just solve problems they created with their magic by using magic in a more direct way than the half-hour plots allowed? These questions have been pondered in the social science departments of all the great insitutions of higher learning.
But at the end of the day, which is where we are, Rowling did create a very compelling alternate universe, even if lacking in the desired degree of internal consistency, and characters that children and many adults did manage to care about.
And, yeah, she made a boatload of money. There must be some magic to that.
UPDATE: In the comments at Megan’s article — similarly bewitched thoughts.
Posted in Ars Longa, Gelt | 4 Comments »
It depends on what “is” is
Posted by Ron Coleman on July 20, 2007
Says disbarred retiree Bill Clinton, the new face of failure:
“The point is that there is no military victory here,” he said exclusively to “Good Morning America.” “I believe that Gen. Petraeus is a very able man. And I don’t have any doubt that they’ll win some battles. And I hope this works. I think every American hopes this works. But it can’t work beyond winning a few battles. … It has to be accompanied by progress on the political front.”
There is no way you can’t read that odd choice of the present tense in that first sentence and be reminded of the great man’s most famous sentence — “there is no improper relationship“…
That Bill Clinton. Man from Hope. Always playing games with us. And with the truth.
Posted in Orient, Stragety | 7 Comments »
It’s a New York thing
Posted by Ron Coleman on July 19, 2007
Glenn links to Michelle, who reports that the Senate has killed a legislative provision granting immunity from lawsuits against members of the public for reporting suspicious behavior that may lead to a terrorist attack — the “John Doe” amendment.
It’s not an obvious policy one way or the other. The possibility for abuse is clear.
But for some reason, according to the reports linked to above the people behind this legislative shift have chosen to obscure their identities. Why?
By the way, if you’re not from around here, here’s the original:
It’s kind of ubiquitous in these parts.
UPDATE: More proposed graphics, in the classic mode, from Gateway Pundit.
Posted in Metropolis, Politics and Poker | 10 Comments »
Last best
Posted by Ron Coleman on July 19, 2007
Originally uploaded by Ron Coleman.
I took this picture of the interior of Grand Central Station a couple of weeks ago. Thank God, as bad as the steam pipe explosion was, it could have been immensely worse. If I told you that such a thing would happen at such a time and such a place, you’d ask me how many dozen were killed, I think.
It is small potatoes in comparison, but can I say, I am also glad nothing happened to New York City’s last, grandest room?
Posted in Metropolis | Leave a Comment »
