XDA

There came a time when the [Viet Nam] war was won. The fighting wasn't over, but the war was won. This achievement can probably best be dated in late 1970, after the Cambodian incursion in the spring of the year. By then the South Vietnamese countryside has been widely pacified, so much so that the term "pacification" was no longer even used.

Lewis Sorley

Labels: Lewis Sorley quote

What’s insulting is that Marcotte and Steinem and other Stepford Feminists believe that women are incapable of being responsible for their own actions. That if they have the simple human emotions like fear of the unknown or self-doubt, then they should be relieved of that icky burden immediately because surely they can’t handle it. Motherhood is a punishment and a burden that only certain women can be expected to handle. Some aren’t “equipped” to do so, you see.

They are also the ones who want to hide information from women, for fear that women are too stupid to handle the truth; they don’t even want women to see ultrasounds before aborting their children. They have so little respect for women, that they deny the very existence of post-abortion syndrome. To them, it’s inconceivable that any woman would actually feel remorse or be racked with guilt, her entire life, after having an abortion. She got rid of that pesky, burdensome, “just a clump of cells”, inconvenience! If she doesn’t feel joyful relief, she can’t be a “real” feminist-y woman!

Lori Ziganto

Labels: Lori Ziganto quote

The history of our Civil War combat in Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania is largely a search by President Lincoln for the right man to lead the numerically superior forces, either comprising, or spearheaded by, the Army of the Potomac, to victory. It was a search that went on three years too long. McDowell, McClellan, Pope (kinda), Burnside, Hooker and Meade couldn't win the war. Grant could. He was the right man.

Just so, Gulf War II, finishing up the fight against Saddam Hussein's Iraqi army, starting in 2003, went on way too long because of the wrong guys in charge. Franks did OK (like Meade in 1863) but his replacements, Casey, Sanchez and even Odierno (and perhaps, to a degree, Abizaid) couldn't get us to victory. General Petraeus got the job done. (I know Iraq is no democratic utopia but the imminent collapse of the country into depotism doesn't seem so imminent and we are drawing down seriously with very few of our troops in active combat roles now). Perhaps our political choices will again snatch defeat from the jaws of victory but, just as in Viet Nam, we have won the war and leave a nation with the real chance to be a successful republic. If they can keep it.

So what about Afghanistan? We had enormous success in there in 2001 -- 2002, and drove the Taliban and al Qaeda before us. They holed up in Pakistan where the only thing that really works well there, the military, tried (some) and failed to destroy them. So the war, in the lightest possible forms of sustained combat, has lingered and dragged on and actually gotten worse--eight years plus, our longest war. The caretakers of the very low level conflict, Barno and Eikenberry had proved incapable of putting the Taliban away (not all their fault) but they were also unable to stop the Taliban escalation. Certainly the more recent guy in charge, McKiernan, summarily sacked and humiliated by our current commander in chief, wasn't getting it done. What about McChrystal, hand-picked by President Obama? How was he preforming?

In my mind, not all the great, despite his great skills as a warrior and leader of men. So the tiny ray of silverish lining in this very recent summary firing and petulant humiliation is the fact that Petraeus is back in. Can he reverse our seemingly bleak prospects one more time?

Labels: Afghanistan; McChrystal; Petraeus

Having gays NOT serve in the military is a position held by lots of people in other parts of the country, but I do not recall any Christian colleges banning military recruiters because the schools believed "Don't ask, don't tell" went too far the other way.

Not only is every weird, shared delusion of the New York liberal deemed sacrosanct, but what ought to be sacrosanct -- off the top of my head, human life -- isn't.

As Stan Evans says, whatever liberals disapprove of, they want banned (smoking, guns, practicing Christianity, ROTC, the Pledge of Allegiance) and whatever they approve of, they make mandatory (abortion-on-demand, gay marriage, pornography, condom distribution in public schools, screenings of "An Inconvenient Truth").

When liberals say, "nothing is sacrosanct," they mean "nothing other Americans consider sacrosanct is sacrosanct." They demonstrate their open-mindedness by ridiculing other people's dogma, but will not brook the most trifling criticism of their own dogmas.

Ann Coulter

Labels: Ann Coulter quote

Multiculturalism trumps feminism, and so the media accept a two-tier sisterhood in which Muslim girls are run over, stabbed, strangled, drowned and decapitated for wanting to live like the women they read about in The New York Times and The Washington Post. No matter how novel or arresting the details of a story are, the PC blinkers go on immediately. As Miss Chesler adds:

In 2009, the gruesome beheading of Aasiya Z. Hassan was covered only five days later by the New York Times—and then mainly to explain that Islam had nothing to do with it and that anyone who believes to the contrary is misguided or prejudiced.

The media's attitude to "honor killings" is not only shameful and dishonors the dead; it's also part of the reason why America's newspapers are sliding off the cliff: Their silence on this issue is merely an especially ugly manifestation of how their news instincts have been castrated by political correctness.

Mark Steyn

Labels: Mark Steyn quote

Wife Kit and I were down with friends north of Canon City for a bar party. We stayed the night in the guest cabin. Others saw a black bear start to climb a tree then run off, but I missed it. The next day riders reported a hawk that didn't fly from a very low perch even when they rode right by it. We went to investigate and found an immature hawk with a wound on its right wing. We put it under a net without any further trauma and then transferred it to a Jack Russell terrier sized dog carrier and ultimately to the Raptor Society whose agent assured us it was going to be fine. It was a Peregrine Falcon in fact, the king of the raptors. Huge yellow feet with long talons and yellow rimmed eyes are its features leaving a lasting memory. I hope it's OK. I mainly watched the rescue.

Later, I couldn't hit a 16 inch iron disc 680 yards away with a 24 power scope on a Remington 700 in .223, but with spotters calling out where each shot landed, I rang the gong with a Springfield '03 in 30.06 with iron sites. Took about 13 tries though.

Shooting and riding and raptor rescue is a normal Sunday for these friends.

Labels: Personal History; Raptor Rescue

Wind is a particularly useless form of power if you don’t have a way of storing the energy. It just seems the politicians have been taken in by the wind lobby, and they’ve taken leave of their senses.

Jeremy Nicholson

Labels: Jeremy Nicholson

Feminists view pro-life women in politics with disgust because to a liberal woman, abortion is the key to being a liberated modern woman. They can brook no diversity and no nuance of thought. A woman ought not dare to express her concern about a baby's civil rights, for example. That's just crazy talk and undermines all women, if you're a liberal woman.

So the solution is to kick it old misogynist style and discredit the woman. If possible, demean her. Draw attention to her body. Draw attention to her sexuality. Imply that she's a slut. State outright that she has no fashion-sense. Criticize her hair. Be offended with how much leg she shows.

You know, act like a misogynist....to you know, achieve feminist ends. Ignore the fact that you're undermining your own cause because all is fair when it comes to slaughtering an ideological opponent.

Melissa Clouthier

Labels: Melissa Clouthier quote

As Paul Mirengoff of the Power Line blog observes, traditionally when useful idiots shill for illiberal ideologies it requires at least “the illusion of progressivism” to bring them on board. Islam can’t provide that, but that’s no obstacle to getting the bien pensants to sign up. As much as anyone, secular leftists want meaning in their lives. But Communism went belly up; the postwar welfare state is bankrupt; environmentalism has taken a hit in recent months; and Christianity gives them the vapours. Nicholas Kristof will not be the first great thinker to talk himself into a view of Islam as this season’s version of Richard Gere Buddhism.

Mark Steyn

Labels: Mark Steyn quote

Labels: TigerHawk quote

Every so often I read something from the left. It's usually unsatisfying as what is written almost always conflicts with what I believe and/or facts I am morally certain of. Often the lefty screed is heavy on emotion and light on logic. Those are very unsatisfying indeed. Then there are things like this Nation op-ed piece, Free Gaza, which are not only bad for the reasons above, but actively dishonest, usually by omission. Behold:

The title has a bit of the time warp about it, Free Gaza? Didn't the Israelis unilaterally depart from the Gaza back in 2005, violently uprooting over 8500 Jewish settlers and making the Gaza completely Judenrein, as the Nazi like Palestinians insist? Why yes they did--Gaza is already free. The article never actually comes out and states that obvious history. It's not the worst omission. Here is a representative paragraph.

The attack on the Freedom Flotilla is the culmination of more than four years of failed policy, in which a siege has been imposed on the entire population of Gaza in an attempt to weaken and isolate Hamas after its victory in the 2006 parliamentary elections. Israel does not bear sole responsibility for an unjust blockade that also undermines its own long-term security; indeed, the policy was jointly crafted and executed with the United States and has enjoyed the collusion of the European Union, Egypt and even the Fatah wing of the Palestinian Authority.

The "attack" was from the radical Islamacists on the one ship on the IDF soldiers whose primary weapons were non-lethal. What the lefties call a "siege" is in fact a method of preventing re-armament of a hostile neighbor. It is an entirely legal method about as far from a siege as you can get. It is a just blockade. Of course, to the left, legitimate and successful self defense is always wrong, always is a failure, always undercuts true security. The left seems to know a way to true security which does not involve any actual security measures, like guns or a border fence. Here's another.

The effects of this policy on the people of Gaza have been devastating. According to various UN agencies, the formal economy has collapsed. More than 60 percent of the people are food insecure, and nearly 80 percent depend on the UN for sustenance, with rising levels of malnutrition. The destruction of Gaza's infrastructure has been comprehensive, with the reduction in electricity supply damaging food production and storage and dangerously limiting access to safe drinking water. The blockade has prevented all but minimal repair of the damage from Israel's 2008–09 military assault; thousands are still displaced from their homes.

In other words the shiftless Gazans rely entirely on international largess which Israel allows into Gaza, several hundred thousand tons a day. Some siege. Oh, and the destruction of the infrastructure, the Gazans did a whole lot of that in looting and vandalism of efficient Israeli farms and greenhouses shortly after the IDF left. That operation 'cast lead,' the Israeli defense from continual Gazan attack, caused further destruction is also solely the result of Gazan malfeasance. Oh, the power cuts, where does the power come from? Israel. Some siege. One of the items not allowed into Gaza is concrete, so that Hamas can't use it to build bunkers and defense points. The Gazans smuggle in so much through the hundred tunnels into Egypt, that lately the price of it has dropped. Some siege. Ready for some more?

Israel's occupation would not have been possible without tens of billions in US military aid, without dozens of UN vetoes cast by Washington, without the State Department's back-room strong-arming of other nations. It would not have been possible without the dishonesty of a US media establishment that habitually twists or simply refuses to report basic facts about the Israel-Palestine conflict—and is often less critical than the media in Israel.

Now this is just delusional. Occupation? The Israelis left Gaza completely half a decade ago. If we were to actually enforce our border with Mexico, would we then occupy Mexico? Occupation by guarding the border and insisting on customs like inspections of humanitarian aid. This is prime lefty logic. And, given the point of this posting, which I'm getting to, don't rush me, it is rich to hear the lefties complain about the American media's so called 'refusal to report the basic facts about the Israel-Palestine conflict.' Rich!

And my point? Well the article leaves out a few things, a few thousand things, that is, the thousands of Kassam rockets and thousands of mortar rounds which the Gazans were firing into Israel for years and years. That little fact is left out of the article. It is an important and telling omission. The whole reason there is a sea blockade, by both Egypt and Israel, and both nations enforce their border with all the seriousness with which we fail to enforce ours, is to prevent Hamas from rearming and beginning the deadly barrage again. Everything this silly, dishonest editorial complains of is a direct result of the deadly, war crime barrage the Gazans started shortly after the IDF left. Why the lefties don't mention it is patently obvious. That little fact of naked Gazan assault undercuts every word of the lefty screed. It is an inconvenient fact the editors of the execrable Nation choose merely to ignore.

Delusion, projection, lying outright, lying by omission. Fairly typical lefty article, actually.

Labels: Arab Israeli Conflict; Gaza front, Nation magazine; omission of key facts; psychological projection

The fact that the IPCC scientists believed in the global warming they were promoting means that their morality at that level was better than expected, but it also means that they are a lot more stupid than expected.

David Archibald

Labels: David Archibald quote

OK, here are the travel snaps.

Step-son and I went with his uncle, my bro in law Gary (on the left here mit richtig Deutcher Fabian zu rechts) to fish at an undisclosed lake just a mile or two from Wyoming.
Gary is one of those types who has to have a huge fire in camp all the time
and he even brought his own firewood for it. Sheesh.







There is a lot of beetle kill pine and fir up there (Damn global warming!) and they have cut down many of the trees around the roads and trails so that the dead trees don't fall on people.


It ain't that pretty right now but I wonder what will replace the scads of dead trees? A different pine? Aspen?







Here is the first day's catch. All big rainbows. Pink meat and right tasty.







Here is the view from our hotel room in NYC, where we went after attending only son's graduation out on Long Island at SUNY Stoney Brook. Andrew was one of the few non Asians graduating in engineering, in his case, electrical engineering.










Eldest daughter also went to Stony Brook so they have lots of friends in the area, including some who live in Queens in what turns out to be a hundred year old neighborhood of Czechs and Slovaks. So we went to a battle of the local bands at the beer garden there and it was pretty good beer, some even better than Pilsner Urquell, the original pilsner.







Here is Andrew surrounded by his sisters and mother and girlfriend outside them. I'm proud of my son earning a degree I could only dream of getting, such are my math skills, if you can call them skills.

Labels: Personal History; trips to NYC and Colorado's northern border